12 Facts About Federico Barocci

Federico Barocci's work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque of Rubens.

Federico Barocci is generally considered the greatest and the most individual painter of his time in central Italy.

Federico Barocci was born at Urbino, Duchy of Urbino, and received his earliest apprenticeship with his father, Ambrogio Barocci, a sculptor of some local eminence.

Federico Barocci was then apprenticed with the painter Battista Franco Veneziano in Urbino.

Federico Barocci accompanied his uncle, Bartolommeo Genga to Pesaro, then in 1548 to Rome, where he was worked in the pre-eminent studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari.

Federico Barocci was invited back to Rome by Pope Pius IV to assist in the decoration of the Vatican Belvedere Palace at Rome, where he painted the Virgin Mary and infant, with several Saints and a ceiling in fresco, representing the Annunciation.

Federico Barocci suspected that a salad which he had eaten had been poisoned by jealous rivals.

Such studies were part of a complex process Federico Barocci used to complete his altarpieces.

Federico Barocci did innumerable sketches: gestural, compositional, figural studies, lighting studies, perspective studies, color studies, nature studies, etc.

Federico Barocci again visited Rome during the papacy of Gregory XIII when he painted two admirable pictures for the Chiesa Nuova, representing the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elisabeth and the Presentation in the Temple, and for the Chiesa della Minerva, a Last Supper.

The artist biographer Giovanni Bellori, the Baroque equivalent of Giorgio Vasari, considered Federico Barocci to be among the finest painters of his time.

Federico Barocci's swirling composition and the focus on the emotional and spiritual are elements that foreshadow the Baroque of Rubens.