Francesco Allegrini

(b ?Cantiano, 1615-20; d ?Gubbio, after 1679). Italian painter. A pupil of Cavaliere d'Arpino, he was attracted early on by the art of Pietro da Cortona, although the full Baroque remained alien to him. He has often been confused with his father, Flaminio Allegrini (?1587-?1663), who was also a painter. The early sources state that Francesco worked in Savona Cathedral and in the Durazzi and Gavotti palaces in Genoa, yet it remains unclear whether these commissions should be attributed to him or to his father. Francesco worked mostly in Rome, where many of his canvases and frescoes are preserved in churches and palaces. Around 1650 he executed the St Catherine altarpiece in the church of SS Domenico e Sisto, Rome (in situ). Between 1652 and 1654 he was working on frescoes in the Speralli Chapel in the cathedral at Gubbio. In 1653 he took part in an important project to decorate the church of S Marco, Rome, under the supervision of Cortona. The two canvases he painted there, SS Abdon and Sennen Yoked to the Cart of Emperor Decius and the Consecration of the Basilica of St Mark (both in situ), reveal the influence of Andrea Sacchi's and Pier Francesco Mola's neo-Venetian art. At about the same time he painted the Scenes from the Old Testament in the Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona, Rome. Allegrini also painted battle scenes, and his works in this genre include frescoes in the Palazzo Rospigliosi (c. 1655) and the Palazzo Altemps. Between 1659 and 1660 he produced what is perhaps his most important work, a cycle of three frescoes

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