Francesco Mancini

On 10 January 1731 a reminder reached Francesco Mancini in Rome asking him to deliver his painting so that it could be shipped as soon as possible. King João V of Portugal was building the vast palace, convent and basilica of Mafra outside Lisbon, ordering altarpieces for it from painters in Rome, and Mancini's Coronation of the Virgin was meant for the right transept of the church. For a long time his Portuguese canvases were filed under the name of his friend Agostino Masucci, another painter working in Rome.

Mancini came from Sant'Angelo in Vado, a small town in the hills of the Marche, and trained in Forlì and Bologna under Carlo Cignani, the leading Bolognese painter of his day. In Rome he took his bearings from Carlo Maratta, also from the Marche, and the clear, luminous colour that contemporaries admired in him grew out of that classical manner. He was counted among the best painters in the city and rose to lead the Accademia di San Luca, Rome's academy of artists.

His daughter Faustina married the sculptor Pietro Bracci, who later carved the great central figure of Ocean for the Trevi Fountain.