Francesco Maffei

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Francesco Maffei was an Italian Baroque painter (1605, Vicenza- 1660, Padua). He is noted for his somewhat provincial stylistic quirks, combining the decorative manner of baroque with visual distortions and nervous brush strokes. His figures often glimmer with imprecise borders; a style which would characterize also the pittura de tocco e di macchia (painting of touch and dots) of the following decades and century. Representatives of this manner came from diverse regions of Europe, and worked in diverse styles, including Ricci, Carpione, Magnasco, and later Francesco Guardi.

The canvases are often crowded with people and vigorous action (see War against the Fallen Angels at the Galleria Brera in Milan). He probably trained in Vicenza with his father, and painted mostly in Vicenza or other nearby towns. He is known for paintings in the Palazzo del Podesta in Vicenza, and in the Church of Santa Maria del Soccorso (La Rotonda) in Rovigo (1644-55). He was trained under the Mannerist painter, Alessandro Maganza, yet influenced by a variety of painters, including Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Tintoretto, and Magnasco.He is known to have traveled briefly to Venice in 1638, where he would have encountered the then brash new baroque painterly style of Liss, Strozzi, and Fetti. Maffei left Vicenza in 1657 and settled in Padua, where he died of the plague. He influenced a variety of painters, including Andrea Celesti (c1637-1711) and Antonio Belluci (1654-1727), a mentor of Sebastiano Ricci.