Guido Cagnacci, born in Santarcangelo di Romagna…
September 1658 CE
Guido Cagnacci, born in Santarcangelo di Romagna near Rimini, had worked in Rimini from 1627 to 1642.
He had afterwards lived in Forlì, where he had absorbed the lesson of the Melozzos’ painting.
Prior to that, he had been in Rome, in contact with Guercino, Guido Reni and Simon Vouet.
He may have had an apprenticeship with the elderly Ludovico Carracci.
His initial output included many devotional subjects, but moving to Venice in 1650 under the name of Guico Baldo Canlassi da Bologna, he had renewed a friendship with Nicolas Regnier, and dedicated himself to private salon paintings, often depicting sensuous naked women from thigh upwards, including Lucretia, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene.
This allies him to a strand of courtly painting, epitomized in Florence by Francesco Furini, Simone Pignoni and others.
He travels in 1658 to Vienna, where he remains under the patronage of the emperor Leopold I.