17^th – 18^th Century. Italian

Pietro Nelli was an Italian artist specialised in the genre of portraiture in seventeenth-century Rome.

While still very young he moved from his hometown to Rome, where he trained at the studio of Giovanni Maria Morandi (1622-1717). His time with the artist from Florence would prove critical in his training, and his artistic personality could be said to have been well formed during this period. With the passing of the years, Nelli would specialise in the same genres cultivated by his master, namely: religious painting and very particularly portraiture. Apart from training at his studio, Nelli was Morandi’s favourite pupil and the master asked Nelli for his assistance on several occasions and even invited him to Florence to help in some commissions.

After returning to Rome, the artist cultivated his facet as a portraitist, and even painted a portrait of the recently elected Pope Clement XI. In the 1620s, he established himself as one of Rome’s main portrait artists, winning important commissions to paint portraits of popes, cardinals and aristocrats. He was seen as continuing the work of popularising the iconography of cardinals which had been begun by Morandi. In 1719 Nelli was appointed a member of the Accademia di San Luca.

Apart from specialising in portraiture, Pietro Nelli also acquired fame as a painter of religious scenes. Worth mentioning among them is an Annunciation from 1737-38 commissioned by Cardinal Camillo Cybo for the apse of the Civita Castellana cathedral, probably one of the final works by the artist, who died in Rome in 1740.