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Croce, Baldassarre
(b Bologna, 1553–8; d Rome, 8 Nov 1628). Italian painter. He is first recorded in 1575 in Bologna, where he trained in the local Mannerist style of such painters as Lorenzo Sabatini, Orazio Sammachini, Pellegrino Tibaldi and Denys Calvaert. During the papacy of Gregory XIII he went to Rome and worked at the Vatican on the decoration of the Cortile di S Damaso, under the supervision of Sabatini (1576–7), and on that of the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche, under Girolamo Muziano and Cesare Nebbia (1580–83). In Rome, he became a member of the Accademia di S Luca (1581) and of the Virtuosi al Pantheon (1584). His fresco for the oratory of the Crocifisso there, the Approval of the Statutes (c. 1583), reflects the Roman Mannerist style of Federico Zuccaro. He executed frescoes in S Giacomo degli Spagnoli, Rome (1583–4), and took part in projects of Sixtus V, including the decoration of the Scala Santa, Rome (1586–9), where his style is close to Bolognese Mannerism, but with echoes of Muziano, via Nebbia (Scavizzi). In 1592 he completed the decoration of the Sala Regia in the Palazzo Comunale, Viterbo: he painted the six scenes as fictive tapestries within an elaborate architectonic border, including festoons, portrait medallions, putti and niches with historical figures. Two of his frescoes, the Cruxifixion and the Pietà (both 1593), in the central nave of S Maria Maggiore, Rome, show the influence of Zuccaro and Muziano, especially in the draperies.
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