Samacchini trained under Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527-1596), but his early work was influenced primarily by such artists as Raphael (1483-1520) and Prospero Fontana (1512-1597), as is detectable in the Marriage of the Virgin (c. 1555-1560) for S. Giuseppe in Bologna. In 1563 he worked in the Vatican, participating in the decoration of the Sala Regia and the Belvedere. This experience of Rome exposed S