Preti, Mattia [key], 1613–99, Italian baroque painter, called Il Calabrese for his birthplace. Preti went to Rome c.1630 and studied with Lanfranco. His most dramatic works were the Caravaggesque paintings of his period in Naples (1656–60). His frescoes in the Valmontone Palace in Rome (1661) show a change to the late baroque manner in the flickering, restless treatment of the figures. After 1661, Preti settled in Malta, where he decorated the vault of San Giovanni in Valletta.
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