Timeline

One of the leading artists of the Counter Reformation in Florence, Santi di Tito played an important role in the transition from Mannerism to the Baroque in the city. Apart from six early years in Rome, between 1558 and 1564, he was to spend most of his career in Florence, where he painted numerous altarpieces for local churches that, in their emphasis on clarity of form and narrative content, served to challenge the excesses of the earlier generation of Mannerist painters. Among his early works are two paintings for the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio, painted between 1570 and 1572, which look somewhat out of place next to the more Mannerist works of the artist’s contemporaries in the same room. Among several works painted for Florentine churches may be noted two altarpieces in Santa Croce, a Resurrection of Christ of 1568 and a Supper at Emmaus of 1574, as well as five lunette frescoes for the Chiostro Grande of Santa Maria Novella, painted between 1572 and 1582. Santi di Tito’s success led to the establishment of a flourishing studio, where he held informal life-drawing classes which were popular among younger Florentine artists. Indeed, his influence among his many students, among whom were Andrea Boscoli, Agostino Ciampelli, Ludovico Cigoli and Gregorio Pagani, ensured that his Reformist style dominated the work of the succeeding generation of painters in Florence.

A talented and prolific draughtsman, Santi di Tito was, according to his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, ‘tanto innamorato di questa bella facolt‡ di disegno’. He goes on to note that the artist spent all his spare time making drawings (including, as Baldinucci writes, studies of his wife, his children, the servants, the chairs, the footstools and finally the cat), and indeed a recently discovered inventory of the contents of Santi’s house and studio, taken just after his death in 1603, list more than seven hundred sheets. A large number of Santi di Tito’s drawings were purchased by Baldinucci from the artist’s grandson and are now in the Uffizi in Florence, which today houses the largest number of drawings by the artist, amounting to some 250 sheets. Other significant groups are in the Louvre and the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome.