Giovanni Battista Benaschi

Titi gave some details of his activity in Rome and he mentioned the following works: the Annunciation, the Crucifixion and the St. Michael who Defeats the Rebel Angels in San Bonaventura al Palatino; the frescoed Fortress in a vault of the left aisle of San Carlo al Corso; the two paintings depicting Daniel in the Lions' Den and the Resurrection of Lazarus, the frescoes with Eternal Father in Glory and the Assumption in the choir of Santa Maria del Suffragio (dating to shortly after 1662).

As did many other aspiring artists, Benaschi drew inspiration from the Carracci frescoes from the Farnese Gallery, from the statues in the Belvedere at the Vatican Palace, paintings from San Carlo de' Catinari and the works of Lanfranco from the church of Sant Andrea della Valle.

Relative to Lanfranco's style, Benaschi lightened the tints and attenuated the graphic prominence of the contours of the figures in order to achieve greater chromatic fusion and a more rough pictorialism.

[1] Being ill he retired to live in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Caponapoli where he decorated the church with a vast cycle of frescoes executed with the help of Orazio Frezza and Giuseppe Castellano and depicting episodes from the Life of Christ and Virgin.

He had a daughter, Angela, born in Turin in 1666 and died in Rome in 1746, also a painter who was appreciated by her contemporaries - and especially by Pascoli - as a portraitist: at the moment, however, no work of hers is known.