Francesco Maffei

Born to an obscure local painter in Vicenza, Francesco trained in his native city, probably in the successful workshop of Giovan Battista and Alessandro Maganza who introduced him into the circle of their local patrons. In Vicenza, the young artist could expand his figurative repertoire by studying the work of Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Tintoretto and Palma the Younger, paintings by all of whom were to be found in the city and from whom he took the decisive thrust for his subsequent development in a fully Baroque sense. After Alessandro Maganza’s death in 1632, Maffei, who had further perfected his knowledge of Venetian 16th century painting in the meantime, won his first public commission in Vicenza in 1635 in the shape of a now lost canvas celebrating the memory of Agostino Nani, proving that the thirty-year-old painter now enjoyed a well-established reputation. In his mature years, after winning commissions in Venice, Brescia and Rovigo, he returned to Vicenza from 1646 to 1648 to paint a cycle of monochrome frescoes in the Odeon Room in the city’s Teatro Olimpicowith the assistance of his workshop. He moved to Padua in 1657, possibly to escape the harrowing competition of Giulio Carpioni in Vicenza, and remained there until his death in June 1660, working predominantly in the city’s churches, including in the Basilica of St. Anthony.