Biography

Italian painter. He and his collaborator Angelo Michele Colonna are renowned as pre-eminent exponents of quadratura, the painting of illusionistic architectural perspectives. They learnt this art from Girolamo Curti (1575-1632), who had made a speciality of it in Bologna. The two artists created a range of ceiling enframements and decorative ensembles that were architecturally the most unified and rational of their time. This achievement, recognized as the 'Bolognese style', was widely applauded and imitated until the advent of Neo-classicism, when it was criticized for excesses and violations of architectural probity.