Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter of Albanian descent who was active in Bologna, Rome, Viterbo (1609–1610), Mantua (1621–1622) and Florence (1633). He was a distinguished artist of the Bolognese school, deeply influenced by Annibale Carracci’s classicism. His fame rests on his idyllic landscapes and small mythological pictures, the lyrical qualities of which earned him the soubriquet ‘the Anacreon of painters’.