Carlo Cesare Malvasia (18 December 1616 – 9 March 1693) was an Italian scholar and art historian from Bologna, best known for his biographies of Baroque artists titled Felsina pittrice, published in 1678.

The many tracts he published on legal matters spread his fame and brought him offers to join the faculties of other universities, those of Padua and Pavia included, but he preferred not to leave his native city.

These arts he studied under Giacomo Cavedone (1577-1660), a pupil of the Carracci, and while he practiced them for his diversion only, we know that he painted a number of frescoes, apparently landscape scenes and "perspectives," both in his own villa and in those of friends.

At his own expense he set up an art academy to teach aspiring painters to draw from nude [1] Luigi Crespi tells us of his help for struggling young artists, some of whom would otherwise have had to leave the profession.

[1] It is also to Malvasia's great merit that he recognized the talent of Elisabetta Sirani (1638–1665) and, overcoming the resistance of her father, saw to it that she received training as a painter.

Sun King did not fail to show his gratitude to Carlo Cesare by sending him the famous “Gioiello della Vita”, a small but very precious jewel.

It deals with an enigmatic ancient Roman inscription that Malvasia studied and claimed to have deciphered, although his explanation, in the words of one writer, "was not among the most felicitous of the attempts" made by various scholars.

The text is divided into four historical sections, with the first on the trecento painters, the second focusing on Francesco Francia, the third devoted to the Carracci, and the fourth (and most valued today) providing detailed, firsthand accounts of the lives and careers of the artists who rose to pre-eminence during the 17th century in the wake of the Carracci reform, including Guido Reni, Guercino, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani.

On 4 October 1710, the painter Charles de La Fosse began a public reading of his translation of Malvasia's Lives of the Carracci at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture of Paris.

A part of the vast accumulation of working notes that Malvasia used for his Felsina pittrice still survives and can be found, bound in two large manuscript volumes, in the Archiginnasio Municipal Library.

Felsina pittrice has been criticized for its inaccuracies and unfavorably compared to Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (1672) by Malvasia's contemporary, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, on the grounds of that Malvasia's text is a mere compilation of facts embellished with poetic language, lacking in critical assessments and governed by no theoretical framework other than a provincial attachment to his native city.