Francesco Furini ranked among the leading Florentine painters of the first half of the seventeenth century. The classical sculpture in the Medici collections in Florence proved to be a profound influence on the young Furini, as was the work of Raphael, whose work he studied in Rome when he travelled there in 1619. During this Roman sojourn, Furini also encountered the works of Caravaggio and his followers and became acquainted with the exuberant Baroque tradition then on the rise there.
Furini’s highly sensual female nudes, rendered using a unique sfumato technique, combine the grace and harmony of Raphael and antique sculpture with the focus on naturalism and dramatic tenebrism he discovered in Rome.
