Guidobaldo Abbatini

Most visitors to the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, in Rome, come to see Bernini's marble Saint Teresa in ecstasy. Above her the vault opens into a painted heaven, angels on banks of cloud around the dove of the Holy Spirit in a burst of golden light. Bernini designed it. The man who painted it, finishing in 1652, was Guidobaldo Abbatini.

He came from Città di Castello, in Umbria, and was born around 1600. In Rome he trained under the Cavalier d'Arpino, one of the busiest fresco painters in the city, and then spent much of his career inside other men's projects, above all Bernini's, painting frescoes and decoration in Roman chapels to the sculptor's ideas.

He also made mosaics for St Peter's, some to his own designs and some to designs by the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona. Easel paintings by him are rare, among them a handful of portraits of popes and cardinals. He died in Rome in 1656.