Francesco Cairo

Francesco Cairo (26 September 1607 – 27 July 1665), also known as Francesco del Cairo, was an Italian Baroque painter active in Lombardy and Piedmont. He is also known as Il Cavalière del Cairo, because in Turin, he received the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus in recognition of his merit.

Cairo led a successful career as court painter at Turin and painted many large altarpieces for religious orders; the range of his stylistic development during nearly 40 years is enormous, yet his early cabinet pictures, of macabre and morbid subjects, remain his most fascinating achievement. They mark the end of the brilliant originality and passionate feeling that had distinguished early 17th-century Milanese painting.