SACCHI, ANDREA. - Painter, b. at Nettuno (Rome) on 30 Nov. 1599, d. at Rome on 21 June 1661.
His great public work is the altarpiece with the Miracle of St. Gregory, painted for the Vatican Basilica in the Clementine Chapel, commissioned from him by Cardinal Fr. Maria de' Monte in 1625 and which, perhaps to satisfy the latter's taste, is among the S.'s works the one that most displays a certain, albeit very slight, contact with the Caravaggesque world and with that of Rubens. The altarpiece representing the Miracle of the Corporal is now in the chapter hall of the Vatican, since in the 18th century it was replaced with a mosaic copy. Other important works securely attributed to the S. are the four altarpieces executed for the four altars of the piers of the basilica of St. Peter: St. Veronica, the Decapitation of St. Longinus, The Finding of the Cross and the St. Andrew, which are now also in the chapter hall of the Vatican Basilica. The work recognized as the S.'s masterpiece is St. Romuald Narrating His Vision in the Vatican Pinacoteca, painted in 1640. His last notable altarpiece depicts the Transit of St. Anne (S. Carlo ai Catinari, Rome). Other paintings recognized as his by critics are: the Drunkenness of Noah, of which two examples exist, one in the Sciarra Gallery in Rome (now the property of Chimirri in Catanzaro) and the other in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin; The Festival of the Lupercalia (Prado Museum, Madrid), previously attributed to Pietro da Cortona; the Feast of the Gesù, in which the scene of Pope Urban VIII's visit to the church of the Gesù on the occasion of the Jesuit centenary (1630) is painted with vivid realism.
The S., slow in his work, with his broad and pasty brushstroke and his creations of a particular pathetic grandeur full of naturalness, between the dry severity of the true Caravaggesque painters and the decorative abundance of a Lanfranco and a Pietro da Cortona, marks a moment of serene classicism both formal and chromatic, most interesting for the further developments of Roman painting of the 17th and 18th centuries.
His son and pupil was GIUSEPPE, a Conventual friar who died in his convent in Rome. He painted a notable picture for the church of the SS. Apostoli in Rome. An oil panel with St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata was removed and alienated by decree of the S. Congreg. of Bishops and Regulars of 7 Sept. 1793. A Sibyl in Warsaw, attributed to Giuseppe Sacconi, could be his.