Italian painter and art theorist who became the central figure of the Roman Mannerist school and, after the death of Titian, possibly the best known painter in Europe.

Until 1561 Zuccaro was the helper and pupil of his older brother, the painter Taddeo Zuccaro (Zuccaro, Taddeo). In 1565 Federico worked in Florence under the painter, architect, and biographer Giorgio Vasari and codified the theory of Mannerism in L'idea de' scultori, pittori e architetti (1607; “The Idea of Sculptors, Painters, and Architects”) and in a series of frescoes in his own house in Rome (Palazzo Zuccaro). In 1593 he became the first president of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, which is to some extent the parent body of modern art academies. He completed some of Taddeo's work at Caprarola and travelled through France and the Netherlands in 1574.

In England in 1575 Zuccaro painted portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester (and probably no one else—the hundreds of portraits in England that bear his name are ascribed without foundation). Later commissions were the painting of the dome of Florence cathedral left unfinished by Vasari's death (1575–79), a large work in the Palazzo Ducale at Venice in 1582, and much work for El Escorial in Spain (1585–88). His late paintings are much quieter and less mannered in style, and he lived to see Mannerism become extinct.