- NameAndrea Sacchi
- Sexmale
- Nationality/DatesItalian, born 1599, dead 1661
BiographyAndrea Sacchi was a leading painter of the
classical tradition of 17th-century Rome. His
paintings are distinguished by their use of warm
colours and a predilection for simple compositions.
Sacchi trained with Francesco Albani, first
in Rome and later in Bologna. According to the
biographer Giovanni Bellori, he also studied in
the workshop of Cavaliere d’Arpino. In his early
paintings, like the Vision of St Isidore (Sant’
Isidoro, Rome), the Bolognese influences are
evident. In 1621 he settled in Rome and first stood
under the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria
del Monte. The cardinal served as a mediator
for the papal commission for St Gregory and the
Miracle of the Corporal (1625‒26), for St Peter’s
Basilica in Rome. Sacchi’s most famous altarpiece
is the sensitive and contemplative Vision of
St Romuald (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City)
from 1631, painted for the Camaldolese order.
Among his most influential patrons was the
Barberini family. Between 1629 and 1631 Sacchi
executed the important ceiling fresco of the Allegory
of Divine Wisdom in the Barberini Palace,
commissioned by Taddeo Barberini. The work
was not conceived as a quadro riportato; instead,
Sacchi intended to create the illusion of the
apparition of a miraculous vision in the open sky,
in which allegorical female figures rest on clouds,
set around the throne of Divine Wisdom.