Giovanni Battista Ricci

Giovanni Battista Ricci (Novara, circa 1537 – Rome, 1627) nicknamed Il Novara after his birth town, was an Italian painter of the late-Mannerist and early-Baroque period, active mainly in Rome.

Biography He was born in Novara or in Suno, in the present-day Province of Novara. In 1576 he and Bernardino Lanino were commissioned some paintings (perhaps Novara's Crocifissione tra santi) for the Saint Benedict Chapel of the duomo of Novara. He also painted in the Vatican Library and the church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. In 1617–1620, Ricci collaborated with Cristoforo Greppi, a painter from Lombardy, in designing and painting the frescoes for the Castellani Chapel in San Francesco a Ripa. Ricci and his assistants executed several frescoes and paintings in the church of San Giacomo Scossacavalli in Borgo, destroyed in 1937. Ricci was an excellent draftsman, working primarily in pen and brown ink, although a handful of studies in chalk are also known.