Vincenzo Marinelli (5 June 1820 – 18 January 1892) was an Italian painter, known best for his Orientalist canvases based on his travels in Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Sudan.

He then traveled to Egypt, where he completed works for the Ottoman Khedive, Muhammad Sa'id Pasha, accompanying him on a nine-month trip to Sudan.

Back in Naples in 1859, ten years later he was invited to the inauguration of the Suez Canal, he returned to Egypt and traveled up to the first cataract of the Nile.

Among his works are: Parnassus and Great Poets of Antiquity in 17 life size canvases for the Royal Palace in Athens; two large altarpieces: Assumption of the Virgin and Baptism of Christ in the Jordan for the Cathedral of San Antonio of Padua in Rethymno; a canvas of recollecting his trip to Sudan, Khedive Said Pasha ordering the caravan to form, Ballo dell' ape nell Harem (Dance of the Bee in the Harem), and le Baiadere exhibited in 1862 at the first International Exposition of London; Cleopatra and her handmaidens receive Antonio;[2] Cesare Mormile addresses the people rebelling against the decrees of the Inquisition; Un episodio del Cantico dei cantici; Il ritorno del tappeto dalla Mecca; and The Kamsin once in the Gladstone House at Liverpool; Henry IV at Canossa; Un corteo nuziale arabo and Una fiera di schiavi nel deserto.

His Ballo dell'ape garnered notoriety in prior centuries for its exotic and sensuous tone; modern attention is likely more to be disturbed by the depiction of an African courtesan, likely a slave, dancing half-naked for her Arab ruler.