(b Bologna, 5 April 1625; d Bologna, 6 April 1684). Italian painter. After training in Bologna under Guido Reni, Guercino, Giovanni Andrea Sirani and Francesco Gessi, he was in Rome from 1651 to 1655 under the patronage of Abbot Taddeo Pepoli, a distinguished Bolognese scholar. His Bolognese origins, specifically a debt to Reni and the Carracci, are apparent in the Ecstasy of St Cecilia (Imola, S Maria di Valverde), considered to be his first work. The Universal Judgement (Bologna, S Girolamo della Certosa), signed and dated 1658, shows the development of a more Baroque style. That he was also aware of Venetian painting is apparent in his first ceiling fresco, the Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne (c. 1664; Bologna, Palazzo Fibbia, now Masetti-Calzolari), executed in collaboration with the quadraturista Domenico Santi, called Mengazzino (1621-94). Here Canuti tried to conceal any distinction between the real space of the hall and his illusionistic spatial cone traversed by bands of radiating light.
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