Barocci (or Baroccio), Federico (c. 1535–1612)

Italian artist. Based in Urbino, he painted religious themes in a highly coloured, sensitive style that falls between High Renaissance and baroque. Many of his pictures, such as his Holy Family (c. 1570), show the influence of Raphael (also from Urbino) and Correggio.

In Rome, he decorated the palace of the Cardinal Giulio della Rovere (1533–1575) with frescoes, and at the invitation of Pope Pius IV assisted in the decoration of the Belvedere. He developed a soft and mannered style from the study of Raphael and Correggio but combined it with a sense of theatre in which the development of baroque and 17th-century religious painting is foreshadowed. His Madonna del Popolo (Uffizi, Florence) is a characteristic painting.

His most important patron was the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria III della Rovere (1548–1631). In Rome, Barocci was patronized by Cardinal della Rovere, but after four years he returned to Urbino and painted St Margaret for the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament. Returning to Rome in 1560, he began work on the Belvedere, his works being keenly admired by the religious reformer St Philip Neri. His paintings also include an altarpiece of the Deposition in the Cathedral of S Lorenzo in Perugia and a picture of the Last Supper for the Church of Minerva. He introduced the use of coloured pastels to central Italy, and many of these drawings survive.