Baldassare Franceschini

During the time of his apprenticeship his talents were discovered by the local notable Ludovico Guarnacci and the Marquese Curzio Inghirami, brother of the more powerful Julio, secretary of Christina of Lorraine.

Within a year, he had advanced sufficiently to execute frescoes in Volterra with skilled foreshortening, followed by work for the Medici family in the Villa Petraia.

[3] In 1652, the Marchese Filippo Niccolini, planning to employ Franceschini on the frescoes for the cupola and back-wall of his chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, dispatched him to various parts of Italy to improve his style.

The painter, in a tour that lasted some months, took a serious interest in the schools of Parma and Bologna, and, to some extent, in the Romano-Tuscan style of Pietro da Cortona, whose acquaintance he made in Rome.

He acquired Flemish traits from Justus Sustermans and finally adopted the complex chromaticism of Emilian influence, as a result of his journeys to Bologna, Ferrara, Venice and Parma undertaken at the expense of Don Lorenzo between 1640 and 1641.