Francesco del Cairo
1607 – 1665
Francesco del Cairo has been an Italian Baroque painter.
Initially he was trained under Morazzone, whose influence is seen in his early works.
Cairo moved young to Turin to the court of the Savoia. InTurin, Cairo made series of paintings whith subjects spritually strong and in dark tones in execution, such as the several versions of the “Salomè”, the “Erodiade and the Christ in the Garden”.
Between the 1637 – 1638 Cairo traveled to Rome, where he had the opportunity to study the classical painting of the artists of ‘di scuola emiliana’ Guido Reni, Domenichino, Guercino, that of the last Caravaggists and that of the first painters of baroque: Giovanni Lanfranco, Peter from Cortona.
Back to Lombardy he executed some important altar pieces, such as the “Madonna with the St. Caterina” from Siena and “Caterina of Alexandria” for the Certosa of Pavia and the “Saint Carl Borromeo giving the first communion to Saint Luigi Gonzaga di Casalpusterlengo”.
