SALVIATI, FRANCESCO

A Florentine painter, Francesco Salviati frescoed highly imaginative and com­plex decorative systems that extended the possibilities of interior decoration to a new level. Salviati probably received his early training with a goldsmith and in mediocre workshops in Florence. While there, he remained impressed by the work of various Mannerist artists and probably met Giorgio Vasari,* who be­came a friend and supporter. He arrived in Rome in 1531, and in 1536 he collaborated on the decorations for the entry of Emperor Charles V* into the city. By 1538 he had assumed an important place among the many new painters in Rome, receiving a commission for a fresco of the Visitation in the Oratory of St. John the Baptist, which reveals his study of Raphael* and Michelangelo.*

Salviati returned to Florence briefly in 1539 to work on the decorations for the marriage of Cosimo I de' Medici* with Eleanora of Toledo.* Following this, he traveled to Bologna and then went to Venice, where he imported the latest Mannerist innovations of Rome and Florence to northern Italy.In 1543, upon the invitation of Cosimo I, he returned to Florence to work in the Palazzo Vecchio. Salviati's decorative style, with its profusion of ornament, inventive motifs, and compositional liberty, presented an original ornamental splendor. The fame of his work in Florence led to several more decorative commissions in Rome for the Sacchetti and Farnese families, which reveal a new complexity as he played with levels of reality and artifice in a sophisticated fashion. Salviati also occupied himself in painting portraits at various moments, even executing the portrait of King Francois I* when he visited France in 1555-57. Salviati's creativity, sense of fantasy, skill as a colorist, and Mannerist elongated and elegant figural manner coalesced into a decorative style that made him one of the most popular interior decorators in central Italy.

L. Mortari, Francesco Salviati, 1992.