b. 1625 Florence, Italy, d. 1697 Florence, Italy
draftsman; modeler; author
Italian

Born into a prominent Florentine family, Filippo Baldinucci received a Jesuit education and hoped to pursue a religious career. Reluctantly, he abandoned his studies to work for the Medicis, becoming Leopoldo de' Medici's bookkeeper in 1664. He later became a consultant for Leopoldo's drawings collection and gallery of artists' self-portraits. After Leopoldo's death, he served under Cosimo III de' Medici. Though an amateur, Baldinucci was a skilled draftsman and clay modeler. He primarily drew copies of religious images and chalk portraits of his acquaintances. Best known as a writer, Baldinucci's most important publication was the fundamental Notizie de' professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua (Notes on teachers of drawing from Cimabue until now). Baldinucci's well-informed biographies of Italian and northern European artists comprise the first universal history of European figurative arts, expanding and increasing the accuracy of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists . Baldinucci published three volumes in his lifetime, and three appeared posthumously.

He also wrote a biography of Gian Lorenzo Bernini commissioned by Queen Christina of Sweden, the first history of engraving and etching, and the first dictionary of artistic terms.