Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berettini), Italian painter and architect, * 1596 † 1669.

Along with Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, Pietro da Cortona was the brightest shining star of the Roman High Baroque. With his illusionistic painting and church buildings he embellished 17th century Rome.

Church of Santi Luca e Martina, Rome

His first works were painted for the Sacchetti family and are now in the Capitoline Gallery, Rome, along with other works of his, but he was soon taken up by the powerful Barberini family - the family of Urban VIII - for whom he painted frescoes in the ancient church of Santa Bibiana, Rome (1624-1626), followed by his greatest work, the ceiling in the Palazzo Barberini (now the Galleria Nazionale, Rome). This is a huge fresco representing an Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power, begun in 1633 and completed in 1639. A sketch for it is now exhibited with it, but its authenticity is open to doubt. The fresco is a huge illusion, with the central field apparently open to the sky and scores of figures seen 'al di Sotto in Su' apparently coming into the room itself or floating above it. While working on this Pietro also went to Florence and began a series of similar frescoes in the Pitti Palace; he also began a series of frescoes in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome, which was not finished until 1665. Towards the end of his life he devoted much of his time to architecture, but he published a treatise on painting in 1652 under a pseudonym and in collaboration. He refused invitations to both France and Spain. With the help of numerous pupils, of whom Ciro Ferri was the most important, he painted many other frescoes and easel pictures in Rome and Florence.

Among Pietro's more important architectural projects are Santa Luca e Martina (completed in 1664) at the Forum Romanum, the exterior programme of the ancient Santa Maria della Pace (1656-1667), and the façade (with an unusual loggia) of Santa Maria in Via Lata (appr. 1660).