Alessandro Tiarini

Alessandro Tiarini's career turned on a lawsuit. He had trained in Bologna under Prospero Fontana, whose daughter, the painter Lavinia Fontana, was his godmother, when a legal dispute forced him to leave the city. He settled in Florence around 1600 and fell in with local painters who were pushing back toward a plainer, more natural way of drawing figures.

What brought him home was a summons from Ludovico Carracci, the eldest of the three Carracci who had reformed Bolognese painting, and who wanted Tiarini's talent working in Bologna and nearby Reggio Emilia. Back in the north from about 1606, Tiarini softened the Carracci naturalism with the Tuscan manner he had picked up in Florence.

He became one of the busiest religious painters of his generation, turning out altarpieces and fresco cycles across the region of Emilia. Among the best known is St. Dominic Reviving a Child, painted between 1614 and 1618 for the church of San Domenico in Bologna.