Orazio FIDANI
Florence 1610 - Florence 1656
Biography
Among the most significant and talented of the many artists trained in the Florentine studio of Giovanni Bilivert, with whom he worked for around a dozen years, Orazio Fidani painted religious, allegorical and literary subjects. He painted works for churches in Florence and elsewhere in Tuscany, and the contemporary Florentine biographer Filippo Baldinucci also notes of Fidani that he painted numerous canvases for Florentine collectors (‘infinite quadri in Firenze in casa di particolari cittadini’). Relatively few paintings by the artist survive today, however. Among his paintings in Tuscan churches are The Meeting at the Golden Gate of 1643 in the church of San Francesco in Cortona and a Miracle of San Frediano of 1645 in the parish church at Cascina. Among his other public works are several paintings and frescoes for the Certosa at Galluzzo, outside Florence. Fidani’s oeuvre also includes several large easel pictures, often taking as his subject matter scenes from such popular works of literature as Virgil’s 'Aeneid', Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses', Tasso’s 'Gerusalemme Liberata', Ariosto’s 'Orlando Furioso', and Guarini’s 'Il Pastor Fido'. One of his earliest masterpieces in this genre is an Angelica and Medoro, signed and dated 1634, which is today in the Uffizi.
