Biography

Italian painter and tapestry designer. He was Pietro da Cortona's outstanding pupil, and like his master a protégé of the Barberini family. Romanelli's graceful style was less energetic than Cortona's (he owed much to his first teacher Domenichino) and his restrained type of Baroque proved particularly popular and influential in France, where he worked 1645-7 and 1655-7. He introduced to Paris Cortona's characteristic manner of decoration, consisting of paintings combined with richly gilded stuccowork, and this was one of the sources for the great schemes of Lebrun at Versailles and elsewhere. Examples of Romanelli's work survive in the Bibliothéque Nationale (painted for Cardinal Mazarin) and (much altered) in the Salle des Saisons of the Louvre (painted for Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV).