Francesco Albani | |
---|---|
Born |
Bologna |
17 August 1578
Died | 4 October 1660 Bologna |
(aged 82)
Nationality | Italian |
Known for | Painting |
Movement | Baroque |
Francesco Albani or Albano (17 March or 17 August 1578 – 4 October 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter who was active in Bologna (1591–1600), Rome (1600–1609), Bologna (1609), Viterbo (1609–1610), Bologna (1610), Rome (1610–1617), Bologna (1618–1660), Mantova (1621–1622), Roma (1623–1625) and Florence (1633).
He was born in Bologna in 1578, the son of a silk merchant who intended him to go into his own trade. By the age of twelve, however, Albani had become an apprentice to the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, in whose studio of he met Guido Reni. He soon followed Reni to the so-called "Academy" run by Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico Carracci. This studio fostered the careers of many painters of the Bolognese school, including Domenichino, Massari, Viola, Lanfranco, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Pietro Faccini, Remigio Cantagallina, and Reni.
In 1600, Albani moved to Rome to work on the fresco decoration of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, which was being completed by the studio of Annibale Carracci. At this time, Rome, under Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592–1605) was exhibiting some degree of administrative stability and renewed artistic patronage. While Pope Clement had been born into a Florentine family resident in Urbino, his family was allied by marriage to the Emilia-Romagna and the Farnese, since Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma had married Margherita Aldobrandini. Parma, like Bologna, being part of the Region of Emilia-Romagna, it was not surprising that Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, Ranuccio's brother, chose to patronise the Carraccis from Bologna, thereby establishing Bolognese dominance of Roman fresco painting for nearly two decades.