Pier Francesco Battistelli (17th century) was an Italian painter active in the early-

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

period, mainly in his hometown of

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

, as well as

Parma Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmigiano-Reggiano, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 ...

. He painted

quadratura Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective ''di sotto in sù'' and ''quadratura'', is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which ''trompe-l'œil'', perspective tools such as foreshortening, an ...

Biography

He was born in Pieve di Cento (Bologna) in the second half of the 16th century. He was a painter of architecture and adornment, "very well founded in quadrature and perspective" as

Malvasia Malvasia (, also known as Malvazia) is a group of wine grape varieties grown historically in the Mediterranean region, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and the island of Madeira, but now grown in many of the winemaking regions of the world. I ...

underlines. His activity, which took place mainly in the regions between

and

, was documented only in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century. It consists, for the most part, of ornamental-decorative works that Battistelli executed on commission of the local lords, all equally engaged in the efforts to embellish their palaces according to the standards of the new perspective taste. The first news that concerned him referred to the fresco that Battistelli performed in the dome of the sanctuary of the Madonna della Celletta, near Argenta, in 1613. This work, miraculously escaped the ruinous earthquake that struck the area in 1624, was unfortunately destroyed by the bombing of the Second World War. From Farnese, at whose service he had been since 10 May 1618, he was invited to participate in the decoration of the Ducal Palace of Parma and later the Duke of Mirandola, wanting to decorate an entire hall of his palace, entrusted him with this task, imposing, however, to use the design that the Bolognese

Francesco Brizzi Francesco Brizio (1574–1623) was an Italian painter and engraver of the Bolognese School, active in the early- Baroque. It appears Cesare Malvasia confused him with ''il Nosadella'' or Giovanni Francesco Bezzi, who lived and was active only ...

had already prepared for this purpose. The high esteem in which this artist was held, proven by positions of considerable responsibility and commitments of a certain importance, cannot be validated today by the direct study of the works, almost entirely lost during the numerous manipulations that the appointed buildings suffered. Battistelli died in Bologna on March 16, 1625.

References

* 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Bologna Italian Baroque painters Quadratura painters {{Italy-painter-17thC-stub