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Grimaldi, Giovanni Francesco
(b Bologna, 1606; d Rome, 28 Nov 1680). Italian painter, printmaker, draughtsman and architect. He was an accomplished fresco painter, whose decorative landscapes were popular with such leading Roman families as the Santacroce, the Pamphili and the Borghese; his many landscape etchings and drawings spread the influence of 17th-century Bolognese landscape throughout Europe. After studying in Bologna in the circle of the Carracci, he arrived in Rome c. 1626 and by 1635 was already a member of the Accademia di S Luca and associated with the circle of artists working with Pietro da Cortona. Sometime between 1635 and 1640 he collaborated with François Perrier and Giovanni Ruggieri on the decoration of the gallery in the Palazzo Peretti–Amalgia, Rome; the vault, which was probably designed by Grimaldi, was modelled on Cortona’s gallery in the Villa Sacchetti at Castelfusano. In 1640–41, again inspired by the Villa Sacchetti, Grimaldi frescoed the vault of the great hall of the Palazzo Santacroce ai Catinari, Rome. The ceiling is framed with stucco cartouches, and the vault is decorated with five quadri riportati. At the centre, an allegorical composition, the Triumph of Authority over Time, celebrates the Santacroce family, and surrounding this are four compositions of Old Testament scenes set in landscapes deeply influenced by the Carracci tradition, in which trees form a natural frame for views across varied terrain with distant figures. Illusionism is limited to the allegorical figures set against the sky at the corners of the vault.
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