(b San Ginesio; fl 1492–1513). Italian painter. The Virgin and Child with Saints (San Ginesio, Mus. Pin. Gentili) and the fresco of the Madonna and Child in SS Rosario, Amandola, both dated 1492, are his earliest known works. In 1494 he painted the Virgin and Child with a Donor (Urbisaglia, S Maria di Brusciano). The Virgin and Child between the Blessed Liberatus da Loro and St Francis (San Ginesio, Mus. Pin. Gentili) is datable within the 1490s. His painting basically reflects the style of Carlo Crivelli, probably transmitted through the influence of Crivelli’s brother Vittore. Facial expressions tend to be accentuated in a grotesque manner, in keeping with Late Gothic decorative taste, which is also apparent in the costumes, especially in the conspicuous use of gold. His work is also influenced by the Sanseverino school, especially Lorenzo d’Alessandro (c. 1440–1503). Within the limits of Crivelli’s style Folchetti pursued an interest in abstract, at times archaic, decorative patterning. The potentially expressive and dynamic forces of the lines are, however, tempered by a tendency to fall into a mechanical repetition of geometric formulae. In the Virgin and Child (1506; San Ginesio, S Gregorio) a growing interest in rendering volume signals a break from the hitherto rigorous attention to surface patterning, but the latter aspect prevails in Folchetti’s fresco of the Madonna and Child in S Maria, Ronzano. In Urbisaglia the artist is represented by a Pietà (Chiesa della Maestà) and a triptych depicting the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine with SS Peter and Lawrence (1507; Collegiata di S Lorenzo), and in the Municipio, Sarnano, by a Crucifixion dated 1513. Other works by Folchetti can be found in Amandola, San Ginesio, Recanati Cathedral and Philadelphia, PA (Mus. A).