Innocenzo di Pietro Francucci da Imola

From the 17th century into the early 19th, collectors in Italy and abroad competed for the small devotional paintings of Innocenzo Francucci, known as Innocenzo da Imola. He was praised as a faithful follower of Raphael, and his calm Madonnas were repeated so often, by his workshop and by imitators, that the same design turns up again and again with small changes. In 1940 the influential Italian critic Roberto Longhi dismissed him harshly, and his reputation has been rebuilt only since.

He was a goldsmith's son from Imola, a town in Romagna. In 1506 the town council granted his father a subsidy so the boy could study painting in Bologna, and he later spent several years in Florence working with Mariotto Albertinelli, a partner of Fra Bartolomeo. Back in Bologna he made his name with frescoes and an altarpiece of Saint Michael for the monastery of San Michele in Bosco, and he lived in the city for the rest of his life. His last dated picture is a Mary Magdalene of 1543, now in Modena, and Vasari, the painter and biographer, says he fell ill because he worked harder than his strength allowed.