Simone Cantarini

Simone Cantarini
Self portrait, 1630s
Born	(1612-04-12)12 April 1612, Pesaro
Died	15 October 1648(1648-10-15), Verona
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting

Simone Cantarini or Simone da Pesaro, called il Pesarese (Baptized on 21 August 1612 – 15 October 1648) was an Italian painter and engraver. He is mainly known for his history paintings and portraits executed in an original style, which united aspects of Bolognese classicism with a bold naturalism.

Cantarini was also a gifted engraver who achieved extraordinary delicacy and a vibrant and luminous quality in his graphic work.

Cantarini was born in Pesaro, now a town in the Italian region of the Marche, then part of the Papal States and ruled by the Della Rovere. He was baptized on 21 August 1612. His father Girolamo was a prominent merchant and the family was well-off.

There is no documentary information on Cantarini's early training. Initially he may have been a pupil of Giovanni Giacomo Pandolfi. A religious person from a church in Pesaro who supported Cantarini's artistic career accompanied the young artist on a trip to Venice. In Venice he could take advantage of the guidance of the Venetian late-Mannerist painter Sante Peranda and learned drawing skills from Francesco Mingucci, a fellow citizen of Pesaro residing in Venice. He returned to Pesaro. He received his first commissions from the Augustinian order in Pesaro and nearby Fano. His first commissions included the painting Saint Rita of Cascia, now in the Saint Augustine Church of Pesaro, and the The Immaculate Conception with Saints (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna).

It is assumed that Cantarini became a pupil of Claudio Ridolfi although the precise timing of the training is not known. Ridolfi would have passed on to him the Venetian style and a deep appreciation for the art of Federico Barocci, with whom Ridolfi had worked in Urbino. The training cannot have continued after Ridolfi left Pesaro in 1629. Cantarini was thus forced to continue his studies on his own.