Mario Nuzzi

Everyone knew him as Mario dei Fiori, Mario of the Flowers, because flowers were very nearly the only thing he painted. Mario Nuzzi was the first painter in Rome to build an entire career on the flower-piece, a bouquet or garland studied for its own sake rather than as a corner of some larger scene.

He learned the craft from his uncle, the still-life painter Tommaso Salini, and worked in the dramatic Roman manner of his century, blooms lit sharply against dark grounds so the petals seem to glow. Roman noble families competed for his canvases, the inventories of the old palaces are dotted with his name, and a good share of his output was also shipped off to Spain.

He did more than easel pictures. For Cardinal Flavio Chigi he painted flowers directly onto mirrors and onto columns of dark stone, and at the Chigi villa outside Rome he joined other artists on a series of the Four Seasons. He was finally admitted to Rome's painters' academy, the Accademia di San Luca, in 1657, and went on working the same fragrant speciality until his death in 1673.