Gregorio De Ferrari

He also made copies of Correggio's frescoes in the dome of the Parma cathedral, two of which - Rest on the Flight to Egypt and Virgin with St. Jerome and the Magdalene - were later listed as the property of Anton Raphael Mengs.

During this time he may have exchanged ideas with Giovanni Battista Gaulli and Andrea Carlone, both of whom informed his style of work as evidenced by certain qualities adopted after his return to Genoa, such as graceful elongations and vertical spiral movements of the figures, which in turn suggests additional influence by the sculptors Filippo Parodi and Bernardo Schiaffino.

Gregorio made two works inspired by Coreggio, St. Francis Comforted by an Angel and the Rest on the Flight to Egypt, dated from 1674 to 1675.

(Turner 1996, 9) During the 1680s Gregorio joined Andrea Seghizzi, who worked as quadraturista, to fresco several ceilings in the Palazzo Balbi-Senarega, and produced a preliminary sketch for architectural decoration and allegorical figures.

This creative treatment of the subject was appreciated by the commander of the French fleet, Jacques Bailli de Noailles, who asked Gregorio to work in Marseille.

He is known to have restored Andrea Ansaldo's dome in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato between 1700 and 1705, his work being evident in some of the painted figures.

He passed his skill in composing intricate quadratura to his students, Francesco Costa, Imperiale Bottini and his son Lorenzo.

Among the children of Gregorio and his wife, Margherita Piola, was the painter Lorenzo de' Ferrari, as well as his lesser-known brother, an art restorer named Giuseppe.