Pietro Facchetti

1537 – 1619

Italian painter, born to a poor family in Mantua. He trained with Lorenzo Costa the Younger, then moved to Rome and joined the studio of Scipione da Gaeta (1544-1598), where he gained fame as a portrait painter. His contemporaries held Pietro Facchetti in high esteem as a portraitist, and his art was compared to that of Scipione da Gaeta. According to Baglione, he portrayed almost all of the ladies of the Roman high society, as well as the majority of the gentlemen, with his portraits attesting to his exquisite taste and perfect mastership as a draughtsman. Facchetti was also active as a copyist, copper engraver, and art agent for the Gonzaga family. He advised, among others, the Duke of Mantua in matters of Rubens and of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, which had been rejected by the friars of Santa Maria della Scala.

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