Filippo Abbiati

[2] Filippo Abbiati was an apprentice of Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, of whom he resumed the fluid touch and taste for the spacious and luminous foundations, and then of Antonio Busca.

Being in contact with the Venetian painting of Federico Bencovich and Sebastiano Ricci he influenced his apprentices Pietro Maggi and Giuseppe Rivola in this direction.

In 1671 he produced a canvas, that was lost, for the Milanese church of Santa Maria del Carmine and another, also no longer existing, for the Scuola di San Giovanni in Murano, which suggests his presence in Venice, while one of his trips to Rome before 1674 was hypothesized to explain the influence of Roman painting in his painting of Blessed Tolomeo, preserved in the Milanese church of San Vittore al Corpo.

Though it is not easy to distinguish the work of one artist from the other, some claim that only The Triumph of the Holy Trinity, in the dome, and The Scenes of the life of Saint Alexander, in the choir, are of his own hand.

Around that year he painted for the church of Sant'Antonio the scenes of The life of Sant'Andrea Avellino, The Sant'Antonio Converts a Heretic, The Saint Peter Martyr Unmasks a False Madonna and The Miracle of the Mule, the latter two currently preserved in the Diocesan Museum of Milan.