A pupil of Giambattista Naldini, Francesco Curradi entered the Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1590, at the age of twenty. An accomplished draughtsman, one of his earliest projects was a series of eighty-seven red chalk drawings illustrating the life of the future saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, executed in 1606 and today preserved in an album in the Carmelite convent at Careggi, for which the artist also painted a number of canvases.

Together with Domenico Passignano, Matteo Rosselli and Jacopo da Empoli, Curradi was soon established as one of the leading painters in Florence in the first quarter of the 17th century, painting numerous altarpieces for churches in the city and elsewhere in Tuscany. Together with many other loca...