During his entire life Rinaldi intertwined his work as a poet with the frequentation of painters and intellectuals: he was friend of the Carraccis and Guido Reni and close to Lavinia Fontana, Pietro Faccini, Giovanni Valesio and other contemporary artists.

He played an important role in transforming the late lyric style of Torquato Tasso into the highly sensuous and conspicuously ingenious poetry for which Marino is famous.

[8] Rinaldi played an important role in developing the new poetry of the seventeenth century, notable for its linguistic sophistication, extravagant conceits, and ingenious metaphors.

He addressed a sonnet to Guido Reni, for example, only half mockingly requesting a portrait of his lady painted as a mountain of shining ivory in an enameled dawn, a forest of coral in her lap.

An example from religious lyric is an image of the penitent Magdalen tossing away her pearls only to see them transformed into the tears of repentance welling up in her eyes.