Felice Ficherelli
1605–1660 · Grand Duchy of Tuscany · Baroque
The story
Felice Ficherelli was known in Florence by an odd nickname, 'Il Riposo', the resting one, earned by his calm and unhurried manner. Born in San Gimignano in 1605, he was sent young to Florence under the wing of a nobleman, Count Bardi, and apprenticed to Jacopo da Empoli, where he learned by copying the Renaissance masters.
He is remembered above all for one endlessly repeated subject, the death of Lucretia, the Roman noblewoman who took her own life after being raped by the king's son Tarquin. Ficherelli painted her again and again as a half-length figure, and the versions come so close in feeling to those of Guido Cagnacci, a painter of similar sensual half-figures, that scholars still argue over which hand made which canvas. One small example on copper, dated to the late 1630s, now hangs in the Wallace Collection in London.
Ficherelli worked quietly in Tuscany his whole life and died in Florence in 1660.
