Andrea Sacchi

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Andrea Sacchi

DatesBiographical dates: 1599 - 1661 Dead: dead 1661 Born: born 1599

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BiographyBiography: Andrea 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.

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