Leonello Spada

In Bologna around 1614 Leonello Spada was known as the Scimmia del Caravaggio, Caravaggio's ape, because his pictures followed the Roman painter's dark, direct naturalism so closely. Carlo Cesare Malvasia, the city's art biographer, made him a colourful figure, extravagant in dress and bold in manner.

He had started far from that style. After an apprenticeship with Cesare Baglioni, a decorative painter, he moved in the circle of the Carracci academy and helped decorate the funeral of Agostino Carracci in 1603. Then came years of travel, to Naples, Malta and probably Rome. In 1609 and 1610 he frescoed rooms in the Grand Master's palace in Valletta for the Knights of Malta. Caravaggio had already fled the island, and the old story that the two travelled together is doubted today, though Caravaggio's Maltese canvases were there for Spada to study.

His Concert in the Galleria Borghese shows musicians tuning up and a master handing out the parts, and it may be the picture of Music recorded in 1623 in the collection of Maffeo Barberini, the year he became Pope Urban VIII. Spada spent his last years in Parma, working for Duke Ranuccio Farnese, and died there in May 1622.