BONECHI, Matteo - b. 1669 Firenze, d. 1756 Firenze

Italian painter and draftsman. He was a prolific artist, most successful as a fresco painter, who worked mainly in and around Florence. His early years are undocumented, and it is not clear with whom he trained; perhaps Francesco Botti (1640-1710) or Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani (1660-1731) was his teacher. He was certainly strongly influenced by Sagrestani, from whom he may have found it difficult to free himself. The works of his maturity, however, are highly personal and reflect the carefree mood of 18th-century Florence, which responded to the lighter influences of the French Rococo.

Apart from studies for wall decorations, the only works on canvas for which dates are documented are two tondi for San Jacopo Sopr’Arno, Florence: Abraham with the Three Angels and a scene from the Life of St Francis (both 1718). His documented frescoes are the dome of San Verdiana (1716) at Castelfiorentino, the domes of San Jacopo Sopr’Arno (1718) and the Conservatorio di Sant’Agnese (1719-20), both in Florence, the trompe l’oeil ceiling in the shape of a sail for the Compagnia di Sant’Agostino (1724) at Legnaia and the mural decoration of Santa Maria del Suffragio al Pellegrino (1734-35), near Florence.

Wall and ceiling decoration

In the palaces of the respected Florentine patrician families the ballroom was the most important of the public rooms and the place where, following the pattern of the ruling house, their glorious forefathers were evoked. The Capponi dedicated the ballroom of their palace to ancestors who had performed historic service to the state. The scenes, painted by Matteo Bonechi around 1713, were accompanied by detailed Latin inscriptions, and in the ceiling a virtuous hero in classical armour is being conducted to the Temple of Immortality.