Giovanni Battista Naldini

Who was Giovanni Battista Naldini?

Giovanni Battista Naldini was an Italian painter of a late-Mannerism in Florence.

His first apprenticeship was in the studio of Jacopo Pontormo. He went from Rome for a number of months following 1560, and was recruited to work for Giorgio Vasari in 1562. He painted two crowded, mannerist canvas for the Studiolo of Francesco I in the Palazzo Vecchio: the Allegory of Dreams and the Gathering of Ambergris.

He supplied altarpieces to Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. He painted an altarpiece of Calling of Saint Matthew for the Salviati Chapel in San Marco, where he worked alongside Francesco Morandini. Ultimately, he is aptly described by Freedberg as displaying work distantly derivative from the style of Andrea del Sarto, as expressed by Naldini's two mentors and Sarto's two pupils: Pontormo and Vasari. Among his pupils were the Cavalieri Francesco Curradi.

Naldini painted the cycle of frescoes concerning St. John the Baptist in Rome, in the chapel of St.John the Baptist in Chiesa della Trinità dei Monti in Rome in 1580. The chapel, which was added to the original church during works for the new facade, was built in 1570 by the architect Giovanni Antonio Dosio.