A native of Verona, Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1627) belonged to a family of artists. Throughout his career, due to his versatile talents, he worked as a painter, draftsman, illuminator, printmaker, and designer of decorative objects. In 1576 or ’77 he settled in Florence and served as court painter to Francesco I de’ Medici, grand Duke of Tuscany, initially active as a scientific draftsman, miniaturist, and painter of plants and animals, which established his reputation. In this domain he also made handsome decorations for the treatises of the Bolognese natural historian Ulisse Aldrovandi. From the next Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I, Ligozzi received his first public commissions, immense history paintings for the Palazzo Vecchio, The Coronation of Cosimo de’Medici and Pope Boniface VIII Receiving the Florentine Ambassadors. Thereafter Ligozzi ceased performing as court artist, concentrating in the main on religious imagery, with his work – including numerous large altarpieces – reflecting Florentine Counter-Reformation piety. Known to have been a very devout individual himself, he frequently took up Saint Francis as a subject, painting frescoes of the saint’s life between 1599 and 1606 for the church of the Ognissanti, and in 1607 the friars of that congregation sent him to the monastery of La Verna in the Casentino, the location where the saint is said to have received the stigmata. Toward the end of Ligozzi’s life he again worked for the Medici court, painting a cycle of paintings depicting the Passion for Christina of Lorraine.