Giovanni Maria Morandi
1622–1717 · Italian · Baroque
The story
Giovanni Maria Morandi trained as a painter in Florence, where he was born in 1622, studying under Giovanni Bilivert, a master of polished religious scenes. In his late twenties he did what ambitious artists did and left for Rome, and he stayed there for the rest of a very long life.
Rome rewarded him. He became a favourite portraitist of Pope Alexander VII, of the powerful Chigi family, and painted the pope's relatives in Rome and in Siena. His reputation travelled north too: recommended to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, he worked for a time at the imperial court in Vienna, until a new pope, Clement IX, called him back to Rome around 1668.
Alongside the portraits he filled Roman churches with altarpieces, among them a Death of the Virgin for Santa Maria della Pace, near Piazza Navona. He went on painting into extreme old age and died in Rome in 1717, at 94.
