Giovanni Andrea Donducci (1575–1655)

• Also known as Mastelletta, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School.
• Giovanni Andrea Donducci was born in Bologna on 14 February 1575.
• His father was a maker of vats (mastelli).
• He trained in the Carracci Academy degli Incamminati at about the time when Domenichino, and Lucio Massari were there.
• Art biographer Malvasia claims he befriended the Genoese Agostino Tassi while in Rome.
• Between 1613 and 1614, he contributed to the decoration of the chapel of Saint Dominic in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna.

• He also frescoed the patron saints of Bologna on the pendentives of the dome: San Floriano, St. Francis, San Procolo and San Petronio. 

• Malvasia describes him by the late 1620s as increasingly neurotic and reclusive: “an enemy of his friends, suspicious of everyone, hating himself, in other words".

• He is also painted elaborate landscapes to his paintings, likely an influence of Scarsellino's or Niccolò dell'Abbate's works.

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