Giovanni Baglione (Rome, Italy c.1566 - Rome, Italy 1644)

After beginnings in the late mannerist field, his style was strongly influenced by naturalism, luminism, an almost vulgar realism and the theatrical effects introduced by Caravaggio to art around the early 1600s.

A heated hostility developed between these two artists leading to the famous trial in 1603 brought by Baglione against Caravaggio and the artists of his circle (Orazio Gentileschi, Onorio Longhi and Filippo Trisegni), accused of defamation with offensive verses.

Only in the following years, Baglione definitively detached himself from Caravaggism to start his own eclectic style, between mannerist memories and sporadic returns to Caravaggism and rhetorical and emphatic tones typical of the now triumphant Baroque period.

In addition to painting, Giovanni Baglione is also known for his activities as an art writer, biographer and historian, mainly of Italian artists. His writing is well-known on The lives of painters, sculptors and architects. From the pontificate of Gregory XIII in 1572 until the time of Pope Urban Eighth in 1642 and The nine churches of Rome which kept him occupied until a few years before his death in Rome in 1644.