Pietro Bianchi

Pietro Bianchi (1694–1740) was an Italian painter of the Baroque and early Rococo periods, working in Genoa and Rome. His paintings are admired for their quality and beauty, but his perfectionism and his habit of constantly reworking them left a small surviving body of work.

The son of a cooper, he was orphaned young and taken in by his older sister, whose husband served in the household of the Marchese Marcello Sacchetti, who noticed the boy's gift for drawing. He trained with Giacomo Triga and then in the studio of the Genoese Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Baciccia. After Gaulli's death in 1709 he moved to the studio of Giuseppe Ghezzi, under Benedetto Luti.

He painted religious subjects as well as still lifes of animals, flowers and fruit. He turned down a knighthood offered by Pope Clement XII, accepting instead a commission for St Peter's Basilica. The result, The Immaculate Conception, now in Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome, was barely finished when he died and was later rendered in mosaic for St Peter's.

He died at 46. His pupils included Gaetano Sardi and Giovanni Frossi.