Fabrizio Chiari

Fabrizio Chiari (c.1615–1695[1][2][n 1]) was an Italian painter and engraver who spent his entire life in Rome.[1]

Venus and Mercury with Children

Original by Nicolas Poussin	Etching by Fabrizio Chiari

Chiari's early etchings from Nicolas Poussin paintings are described by Michael Bryan as "executed in a scratchy but masterly style";[4] among them are:[1][4]

• Mars and Venus, in a landscape, signed "Fabritius Clarus" 1635.
• Venus and Mercury with Children, signed "Chlarus" 1636
• Venus and Adonis, signed "Nicolaus Pussinus"; This etching has been erroneously attributed to Poussin.

Chiari was enrolled in the Accademia di San Luca from 1635.[1] In San Martino ai Monti in the 1640s he painted the altarpiece, St Martin Dividing his Cloak with the Beggar, and a fresco, The Baptism of Christ, which was overpainted in the 18th century by Antonio Cavallucci.[5] To mark the 1658 canonization of Thomas of Villanova, he painted St. Thomas of Villanova Distributing Alms for Santa Maria del Popolo.[6] His Assumption of the Virgin and Death of St Anne, commissioned in 1654 for the chapel of Regina Coeli convent, were misplaced when it became a prison in 1880;[1][7] the latter turned up in 2012 and in 2019 sold for $30,000 at Sotheby's.[1][8] Others of Chiari's works are no longer known, including church paintings mentioned by Filippo Titi and drawings listed by Nicola Pio.[1] In 1675 Chiari decorated the Sala degli Specchi in the Palazzo Altieri, including a ceiling fresco, The Chariot of Apollo,[9][n 2] in which the cornices, unusually, depict the four ages of man rather than the four seasons.[10]