VALESIO Giovanni Luigi

(Correggio 1583 – Rome 1650)

Italian poet, painter and above all engraver, representative of the early Baroque period. He was active first in Bologna and later in Rome. The art historian Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693) cites him as the son of a Spanish soldier. He was an apprentice in the study of Ludovico Carracci. At the University of Bologna he collaborated with the naturalist, botanist and entomologist Ulisse Aldovrandi in the realization of his book on natural history. Still in Bologna he was a master of painting and etching together with Giovanni Battista Coriolano and Oliviero Gatti, two authors of important Baroque graphic works. After 1621, during the papacy of Gregory XV, he settled in Rome, under the protection of Lavinia Albergati, wife of Orazio Ludovisi, brother of the Pope.
Here he executed the frescoes of Palazzo Ludovisi and those of the monastery of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Taking up again the style of Agostino Carracci, he engraved about two hundred works, partly on the basis of his own drawings and partly translating subjects of other authors.