Marcantonio Franceschini

From the early 1690s Prince Johann Adam Andreas of Liechtenstein, a great collector in Vienna, kept ordering paintings from a studio in Bologna. Marcantonio Franceschini sent him 26 canvases on the loves of Diana and Venus for the Liechtenstein garden palace, and also acted for him as a buyer of other artists' pictures.

Franceschini had trained with Carlo Cignani, the leading Bolognese painter of the day, and worked beside him on frescoes in the ducal garden palace at Parma. For many years his partner was his brother-in-law Luigi Quaini, a cousin of Cignani, who often painted the landscape and architecture in his pictures. Quaini also helped with a huge cycle of history and mythology for the Great Council hall of the Doge's Palace in Genoa, painted from 1701 to 1704 and destroyed by fire in 1777.

In 1711 Pope Clement XI called Franceschini to Rome to design cartoons for the mosaics of the Choir Chapel in St Peter's, work for which the pope later made him a knight. In Bologna he was one of the founders of the Accademia Clementina, the city's academy of art, and became its director in 1721.