Francesco Albani

Francesco Albani painted small, graceful mythologies set in soft green landscapes: Venus and Adonis, Diana and her nymphs, and crowds of plump cupids. His pictures are light and lyrical, and he was one of the most popular painters of such cabinet pictures in seventeenth-century Italy.

Born in Bologna, he trained first with Denis Calvaert and then in the academy of the Carracci family. He joined Annibale Carracci in Rome and worked on major fresco projects there before returning to Bologna, where he ran a successful studio for decades. His four landscape series of the Elements and the Loves of Venus and Diana are among his best-known works.

His paintings are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the Louvre and the Hermitage. Look at his female figures, with their soft outlines against gentle, open landscape.