FURINI, FRANCESCO. - Painter and poet, b. in Florence around 1600 and died in the same city on 15 Aug. 1646. He was a pupil of Passignano and of Matteo Rosselli and a friend of Giovanni da S. Giovanni, with whom he collaborated on the fresco of the Night in the Casino Bentivoglio in Rome. A long stay in Venice lent his painting softness of sfumato and elegance of line.
In the first period of his activity he treated mainly mythological and secular subjects such as the Nessus and Deianira of the Corsini Gallery in Florence and the Wrath and the victories of the Pitti Gallery, a true masterpiece, in which Guercinesque influences are evident in the dark-blue tonality of the sky. From 1633 until his death, having become parish priest of S. Ansano del Mugello, he treated religious and allegorical themes in which, however, he could not conceal a certain coldness of feeling, as in the Madonna del Rosario in the church of S. Maria del Pozzo at Empoli (1634) and in the frescoes of a hall of the Pitti Palace with Stories of the life of St. Lawrence (1636-37). Many of his drawings are preserved at the Uffizi. Of his activity as a poet various sonnets remain.
Bibliography
Florence 1773, pp. 1-22; A. Stanghellini, F. F. pittore, Siena 1914; U. Ojetti, L. Dami, N. Tarchiani, La pittura italiana del '600 e '700 alla mostra di Palazzo Pizzi, Milan-Rome 1924, pp. 29-64; M. Marangoni, s. v. in Euc. Ital., XVI (1932), p. 204.