Allegrini Francesco
(b ?Cantiano, 1615–20; d ?Gubbio, after 1679). Italian painter. A
pupil of Cavaliere d’Arpino, he was attracted early on by the art of
Pietro da Cortona, although the full Baroque remained alien to him.
He has often been confused with his father, Flaminio Allegrini
(?1587–?1663), who was also a painter. The early sources state that
Francesco worked in Savona Cathedral and in the Durazzi and Gavotti
palaces in Genoa, yet it remains unclear whether these commissions
should be attributed to him or to his father. Francesco worked
mostly in Rome, where many of his canvases and frescoes are
preserved in churches and palaces. Around 1650 he executed the St
Catherine altarpiece in the church of SS Domenico e Sisto, Rome (in
situ). Between 1652 and 1654 he was working on frescoes in the
Speralli Chapel in the cathedral at Gubbio. In 1653 he took part in
an important project to decorate the church of S Marco, Rome, under
the supervision of Cortona. The two canvases he painted there, SS
Abdon and Sennen Yoked to the Cart of Emperor Decius and the
Consecration of the Basilica of St Mark (both in situ), reveal the
influence of Andrea Sacchi’s and Pier Francesco Mola’s neo-Venetian
art. At about the same time he painted the Scenes from the Old
Testament in the Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona, Rome. Allegrini
also painted battle scenes, and his works in this genre include
frescoes in the Palazzo Rospigliosi (c. 1655) and the Palazzo
Altemps. Between 1659 and 1660 he produced what is perhaps his most
important work, a cycle of three frescoes—the Battle of Muret, the
Martyrdom of St Peter of Verona and the Triumph of St Thomas
Aquinas—in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, Rome. His last Roman
commission was the series of frescoes depicting scenes from the Life
of St Alexander in the church of SS Cosmo e Damiano. He left Rome c.
1661 and settled in Gubbio, where he painted numerous altarpieces in
a style that pallidly echoes Cortona, for example the Virgin and
Child with Saints in Santa Croce della Foce (1668; in situ). His
last works include the frescoes painted between 1674 and 1678 in the
church of the Madonna del Prato
