Antonio Tempesta

1555 Florence – 1630 Rome

The Florence-born painter and engraver Antonio Tempesta began his career as a pupil of Santi di Tito and then studied under Jan van der Straet, a native of Flanders also known as Stradanus, with whom he collaborated from 1563 to 1565 under the aegis of Giorgio Vasari on the decoration of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio. From about 1580 Tempesta was working in Rome, where he became friends with the Flemish painter Mathijs Bril. Together with Bril he took part in a commission for Pope Gregory XIII to paint the loggias on the third floor of the Vatican Palace.