Mario Balassi

Finally he became a pupil of Domenico Passignano, and accompanied this master as his collaborator to Rome to work under the papacy of Pope Urban VIII.

[1] But in Rome he also worked on his own behalf, performing a Noli me Tangere for the church of San Caio (now destroyed) and produced a copy of Raphael's Transfiguration for Don Taddeo Barberini (now found in the church of the Cappuccini): the latter was praised by Passignano and Guido Reni, who said that "Mario had not copied it, but detached it from Raphael's painting".

Returning to his homeland, he executed a significant number of altar paintings for many churches in Florence, Prato, and Empoli.

His art is visibly influenced by the heterogeneous education of his youth, as well as by the multiple orientations of the contemporaries and the different environments in which the artist found himself.

If in some works the traces of Passignano and of Ligozzi are clearly recognizable, in others they play elements extraneous to the Florentine environment, probably acquired during the Roman stay; while in some, as in the San Nicola da Tolentino of Prato, the "echoes of the Flemish-Caravaggio world" are evident.