Giulio Mancini was a noted physician, art collector and writer on a range of subjects.

A native of Siena

Siena

Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...

, he came to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1592 and quickly made a brilliant medical career, becoming personal physician to pope Urban VIII in 1623.

In his private life the pope's doctor "moved in libertine intellectual and artistic circles and was known as an atheist with an irregular private life." He was a discerning art collector, and his notes on contemporary artists are an important source of our knowledge of Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 artists such as Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

 and Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early career:Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood first apprenticed within his family...

. He also wrote on such diverse subjects as dancing and the ways of courtiers.

Sources

• Peter Robb
  Peter Robb
  Peter Robb is an Australian author.Robb spent his formative years in Australia and New Zealand, and between 1978 and 1992 he spent most of his time in Naples and southern Italy, interspersed with sojourns in Brazil. At the end of 1992 he returned to Sydney.His first book, Midnight in Sicily, was...
  
  , M
  M (book)
  M is a book by Australian author Peter Robb about the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. First published in 1998 in Australia by Duffy & Snellgrove, the book provoked controversy on its being published in Britain in 2000....
  
  (1998)

ISBN 0-312-27474-2

ISBN 0-7475-4858-7