The biography of Federico Barocci, as published in Giovan Pietro Bellori’s Lives
in 1672, has consistently been regarded as the primary source of information on the
artist from Urbino (ca. 1533–1612). This work has significantly impacted the Italian and European historiography and criticism of the painter from the seventeenth
century onwards. 1
Successive generations of Barocci scholars have been compelled to critically engage with Bellori’s account. Bellori’s book has been reprinted in 1728, 1821, 1931,
1976, and 2009. As for, in particular, the Life dedicated by Bellori to Federico Barocci, it was later republished by Andrea Lazzari in 1800 and Giovanni Poggi in 1913,
translated into English by Edmund Pillsbury and Louise Richards in 1978, into
French by Nicholas Turner in 2000, and featured in the catalogue of the Fitzwilliam
Museum’s 2006 exhibition, A Touch of the Divine.
In the biography of Annibale Carracci and more extensively in the Life of Federico, Bellori portrays him as a solitary…