Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano worked so fast that Italians nicknamed him Luca fa presto, Luke works quickly, a phrase supposedly shouted at him as a boy by his painter father pushing him to earn. He grew into the most productive decorator of the Baroque, able to cover a whole ceiling in a matter of weeks.

From Naples he ranged across Italy taking huge commissions. In Florence he painted the ceiling of the gallery in the Medici-Riccardi palace, a swirling allegory of the dynasty, in just a few months. He could imitate any earlier master so convincingly that some of his pastiches passed for originals.

In 1692 the Spanish king Charles II summoned him to Madrid, where he spent a decade frescoing the vaults of the Escorial monastery and the royal palaces. He came home to Naples rich and covered in honours, and painted there until his death in 1705.