Francesco, the son of the gold beater Taddeo Curradi, learnt his first
lessons in art in the workshop of Giovanni Battista Naldini, a late
Mannerist painter. His first works were carried out in collaboration
with his master, with a Purification of the Virgin in 1589 (San NiccolÚ
Oltrarno, Florence) and the decorations on the Ponte alla Carraia to
celebrate the arrival of Christine of Lorraine in Florence. He
registered as a painter in 1590 and enrolled at the Academy of Drawing
in the same year.
The first works he carried out unaided (as for
example his Nativity of the Virgin in the Cathedral of Volterra in
1598), show clear stylistic similarities to the Florentine Reformed
school of painting, in particular with Ligozzi and Santi di Tito.
However, from the beginning of the new century onwards, he abandoned
the late Mannerist school and took his inspiration from Cigoli and
Passignano.
He reached his stylistic maturity during the first twenty
years of the 17th century, a period in which the characteristics of his
personal style of painting gradually began to emerge. During this
period he carried out a great many works, among them the Crucifixion
and the Deposition for the Company of San NiccolÚ del Ceppo (1610), the
Crucifixion with St. Augustine and the Lamentation in the Cathedral of
Volterra (1611), the St. Eustace for the Convent of San Domenico of
Moglio (1612) and the monumental Assumption of the Virgin for the
Parish Church of Santa Maria in Dicomano (1613). His acquaintance with
Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi, at the time the most venerated personage in
Florentine religious circles, led to him becoming the official portrait
painter of this future saint, whose likeness he reproduced in many of
his paintings.
In collaboration with some of Florence's most famous
contemporary painters, between 1616 and 1617 he was busy working on the
decoration of the Buonarroti House; here he painted a canvas entitled
Fame that showed Michelangelo raised above all other painters. His best
known and most successful work dates from this period onwards, like his
Preaching of San Francesco Saverio to the Indians for the Florentine
Church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi (1622); the Narcissus at the
spring and Herminia among the shepherds, commissioned by Cardinal Carlo
de' Medici and intended for the Casino or Little House of San Marco,
date from the same year and confirmed Curradi as a Court artist and
author of profane subjects; and the seven lunettes on canvas of Stories
of Mary Magdalen for the restored Chapel at the Villa of Poggio
Imperiale.
The later years of his activity show no relevant changes in
style, apart from more simplified compositions and a more turbid use of
colour. His later works include a Coronation of the Virgin (1646) and
other paintings of Vallombrosan saints (1648) for the Hermitage of the
Cells of Paradisino at Vallombrosa, and the Preaching of Baptist for
the Rondoni Chapel at Santa Trinita in Florence (1649).
Curradi was the
most representative exponent of Florentine devotional painting in the
first half of the 17th century. His style of painting was always easily
recognisable thanks to an immediate compositional force, careful
drawing and delicate chiaroscuro. He died in Florence in 1661 and was
buried in the Church of Santa Felicita, though his body was later
exhumed and transferred to the family tomb in San Gaetano. |
