Andrea Camassei

On a ceiling of Palazzo Barberini in Rome, the palace of Pope Urban VIII's family, Andrea Camassei painted the Creation of the Angels in 1632, and the fresco is still in place. He had arrived in Rome from Bevagna, a small town in Umbria, by Easter 1626. His father worked hemp, and in Rome he trained in the workshop of the painter Domenichino. The Barberini soon became his main patrons, and in 1634 Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope's nephew, made him custodian of the Sistine Chapel.

That protection ended when Urban VIII died in July 1644. Camassei lost his post at the Sistine, and within two years the pope's nephews had fled to France. He went on working in the baptistery of Saint John Lateran, where he painted two large frescoes of the emperor Constantine in a decoration directed by the painter Andrea Sacchi. In 1647 or 1648 he was jailed after having a man beaten in Bevagna, and he was freed through Olimpia Maidalchini, the powerful sister-in-law of the new pope, Innocent X. His last work was a frieze of Bacchus and Ariadne in Palazzo Pamphilj, the new pope's family palace. He died in Rome on 18 August 1649 and was buried the next day in the church of Sant'Agostino.