Cecco Bravo

Cecco Bravo (15 November 1601 – December 1661) was an Italian painter of the Florentine Baroque school. His true name was Francesco Montelatici.

Biography
He was born in Florence. He trained with Giovanni Biliverti and Sigismondo Coccapani. In the early 1620s he worked in the studio of Matteo Rosselli.

By 1629, he had his own independent studio. His first recorded work is a fresco of the Virgin, St John & Angels (c. 1628/9; San Marco, Florence) and a painting of Charity (Annunziata of Florence). In 1633, he decorated the church of Santissima Annunziata in Pistoia with six lunettes depicting the Life of the Blessed Bonaventura Bonaccorsi, continuing a series begun by Bernardino Poccetti. He painted a frieze depicting children’s Games and stories from Orlando Furioso (c. 1631) for Villa Corsini a Mezzomonte in Impruneta.

He was commissioned to decorate the library in the Casa Buonarroti of Florence. After his depiction of Fame on the ceiling of the library, he became disenchanted with the patron’s excessive instructions, and the panels of illustrious Florentines on the walls were completed by others, including Domenico Puligo and Matteo Rosselli (1636). He was commissioned to complete work initiated by Giovanni da San Giovanni (who died after starting) for the Sala degli Argenti in Palazzo Pitti, in a commission shared with Ottavio Vannini and Francesco Furini. The frescoes, intended to celebrate Lorenzo de' Medici, were commissioned in 1635 by Ferdinando II de' Medici prior to his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Urbino. In the south wall, Bravo completed Lorenzo as messenger of peace.

Bravo was part of a team that frescoed quadri riportati on the walls of the Oratorio dei Vanchetoni. The oratory also contains frescoes by San Giovanni, Pietro Liberi and Baldassare Franceschini (il Volterrano). A canvas by Bravo of the Aurora, a theme also depicted earlier by Guido Reni, is at the Palazzo Montecitorio.

In 1659, Cecco was recommended by the Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici for a position as a court painter to Anna, wife of the archduke of Ferdinand Karl of the Tyrol. He accepted and spent the last two years of his life in Innsbruck, where he died in December 1661.

One of his patrons was Filippo Baldinucci, but Bravo was not included in his biographies of Florentine artists.

Style
Bravo is one of the few Florentines to violate the crisp drawn edges of figures, and aim for a general bravura of execution, nearly becoming a pintore del tocco. Some attribute this to influences he encountered in Venice, for example Bernardo Strozzi. Cecco Bravo influenced Felice Ficherelli (il Riposo). Howard Hibbard contrasted the murky sensuality of the paintings of Pignoni, Furini and Bravo with the piety of Carlo Dolci.

The art historian Anne Barsanti described Cecco's "characteristic compositional scheme" as one in which "the main figures (usually two), expressing themselves in anxious or excited gestures, are placed against a background full of incident but lacking real depth; flashes of light emphasize the dreamlike atmosphere".

Cecco was a prolific draftsman whose drawings, usually executed in red and black chalk, use a flurry of broken lines to create a rich chiaroscuro. The largest collections of his drawings are in the Uffizi and the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence.