Livio Mehus
1630–1691 · Flemish · Baroque
The story
Livio Mehus was born in the Flemish town of Oudenaarde in 1630, but he spent almost his whole working life in Italy. His father had gone abroad to seek his fortune and, when the boy was about ten, called him to Milan. There Livio trained with a minor Flemish painter of battles and landscapes, then set off on his own for Rome while still a teenager.
He fell in with the leading decorators of Baroque Italy, studying under Pietro da Cortona, the painter of vast ceiling frescoes, and working alongside Cortona's pupil Ciro Ferri. It was Florence that finally claimed him. He became court painter to Prince Mattias de' Medici, a brother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and won a high reputation for allegories, mythologies, landscapes and portraits.
He died in Florence in 1691, more than twenty years after the Medici prince who had been his chief patron.
