Girolamo Muziano and Cesare Nebbia at Orvieto

Abstract

The late sixteenth-century redecoration of the Cathedral of Orvieto witnessed both the beginning and the end of the teacher-pupil relationship between Girolamo Muziano and Cesare Nebbia. Working separately and at different times, they executed most of the altarpieces and frescoes for ten new stuccoed chapels built along the nave of the Cathedral. Unfortunately, only their altarpieces, now in the Cathedral Museum, survived a nineteenth-century restoration of the nave.1 Muziano was a young artist when he began the project's paintings in 1555. He executed two altarpieces, the Raising of Lazarus and the Way to Calvary, and the fresco and stucco decorations in the fourth chapel on the left before leaving Orvieto in 1558.2 Cesare Nebbia, who was born in Orvieto in 1536, presumably entered Muziano's shop during this period and accompanied him to Rome, where the two spent the early 1560′s.3 Nebbia left Muziano's shop in mid-1566 to begin an independent career in Orvieto with commissions for the fresco decorations in the first chapel on the left in 1566, and for its altarpiece of the Marriage at Cana in 1569.4 During the 1570′s Nebbia executed all of the fresco decorations in the five right chapels5 and some of their altarpieces. Others were painted by Muziano in Rome at the peak of his career.