Born in Siena, Niccolò Tornioli’s training with Francesco Rustici is reflected in his Crucifixion of 1631 in San Niccolò in Sasso in Siena, his first surviving documented work.
In Rome, in 1634, he won a commission for the Calling of Saint Matthew for the customs-house in Siena (1635–37, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen).
This work reveals Tornioli’s interest in the art of Caravaggio, which Rustici and Rutilio Manetti had already brought to Siena, as well as a new awareness of the classicism and fluid handling of Andrea Sacchi and Pier Francesco Mola.
His highly individual blend of Caravaggesque motifs and the formal language of the Baroque enabled Tornioli to achieve a style analogous to that of Mattia Preti. Indeed, his most famous work, The Astronomers (ca. 1643, Galleria Spada, Rome), was for many years attributed to Preti.
Yet Tornioli’s compositions are always more balanced than those of Preti, and his art has a refinement that suggests a familiarity with Florentine painting, particularly that of Sigismondo Coccapani and Cesare Dandini.
During the 1640s Tornioli continued to be influenced by the art of Cortona.
In 1643, he painted the Roman Charity (Galleria Spada, Rome) and received the commission for the fresco Saint Philip Seeing a Vision during his Illness in the Stanze di San Filippo in Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome, his most vigorously Baroque works. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Cain and Abel (both San Paolo, Bologna) were painted in 1648, followed shortly afterwards by the Sacrifice of Iphegenia (Galleria Spada, Rome), which is probably his last known work.
