SALINI, Tommaso

Italian painter, called Mao. He supported Giovanni Baglione, his friend, biographer and artistic mentor, in his 1603 libel suit against Onorio Longhi, Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi and Filippo Trisegni. Much bad feeling existed: in his testimony Caravaggio contemptuously described Salini as Baglione's "guardian angel", dismissing his daubs and denying having ever seen any of his works. In his life of Salini, Baglione not only described several of the painter's public commissions, but also credited him as the first to paint and arrange flowers with leaves in vases. Those pictures that have been identified include his altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. dedicated to San Nicola da Tolentino in Sant'Agostino, Rome, the main altarpiece from Sant'Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona showing St Agnes saved by an angel, and the standard for the Compagnia degli Scalpellini at Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome.

Baglione reserved highest praise for Salini's subjects drawn from life. Though today their identification and chronology are problematic, in the seventeenth century his still-lifes were much in demand. The inventory made at his death lists numerous paintings of flowers and fruits, twelve of which entered the Medici collection in 1620, for which Salini, of Florentine patronage, was rewarded with a medal on a gold chain. The Ludovisi owned 36 "vasi dei fiori" and a flower piece by Salini was listed in the 1627 Del Monte inventories. GenreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. pictures developing original motifs and unusual themes indebted to Caravaggio's early scenes have also been attributed to him.

A member of the Accademia di San Luca from 1605, Salini was expelled but later readmitted. The donation in 1618 of his ecstasy of St Francis (Santi Luca e Martino, Rome) commemorated his reentry, though his hostility towards Antiveduto Gramatica led to further disputes. Cited as Cavaliere in a census of 1623, Salini was awarded the order of Lo Speron d'Oro.