Giovanni Antonio Galli, called Lo Spadarino

A leading figure in seventeenth-century Roman Mannerism, Giovanni Antonio Galli was born in Rome in 1585 and died in his hometown in 1652.

The ephitet 'Spadarino', refers to his father's trade as a sword-maker. The young artist was primarily influenced by the work of Caravaggio and also by the landscape painter Agostino Tassi. In the 1620s, Spadarino's style shifted with the influence of Carlo Saraceni, with whom he had collaborated on the decoration of the Sala Regia in the Quirinal Palace in Rome in 1616. With Saraceni's guidance, Spadarino developed a highly personal approach to painting, favouring a general embellishment of both the subject and narrative. This saw a departure from the Caravaggesque realism, creating softer, atmospheric representations of scenes, often imbued with a profound melancholy.

Throughout the 1630s and 1640s Lo Spadarino received numerous private and public commissions. Perhaps his most famous work today is his Narcissus, which has variously been attributed to Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi and Bartolomeo Manfredi.