Francesco Trevisani (April 9, 1656 – July 30, 1746) was an Italian painter, active in the period called either early Rococo or late Baroque (barochetto). He was strongly influenced by Carlo Maratta, as is manifest in his masterpiece, the frescoes in San Silvestro in Capite (1695–1696).

Born in Capodistria, Istria (modern Koper now in Slovenia, then part of the Republic of Venice), he was the son of Antonio Trevisani, an architect, by whom he was instructed in the first rudiments of design. He then studied in Venice under Antonio Zanchi and later with Joseph Heintz the Younger, who specialized in genre painting. No paintings survive from this early Venetian period, and c. 1678 Trevisani moved to Rome, where he remained until his death, in 1746. His brother, Angelo Trevisani remained a prominent painter in Venice.

In Rome, he was favoured with the patronage of Cardinal Flavio Chigi. Chigi employed him in several considerable works. His earliest surviving paintings are orientated towards Emilian and Roman classicism. The Trinity with St. Bernard and St. Catherine of Siena (1684), which was painted for the church at La Cetina, the Chigi–Zandadori villa at Cetinale, near Siena, is derived from prototypes by Guido Reni, interpreted in a soft and mannered style. This was followed by the Martyrdom of St. Stephen (Rome, Palazzo Barberini), based on Filippo Lauri’s painting of the same subject (Burghley House, Cambridgeshire). It seems likely that on Lauri’s death in 1694 Trevisani inherited his role as a painter of small, delicate pictures in an Arcadian vein.

Other early works, painted for the Chigi family, such as Christ between St. Philip and St. James (1687) and the Martyrdom of the Four Crowned Saints (1688; both Siena Cathedral), reveal Trevisani’s strong links with contemporary Roman artists, especially those in the circle of Maratta. However, Trevisani’s compositions remain Venetian, reminiscent of those by Antonio Zanchi, as is particularly evident in the Martyrdom of the Four Crowned Saints, a lively, dramatic scene placed in an architectural setting and influenced by the works of Paolo Veronese. Trevisani’s Martyrdom of St. Andrew (before 1697; Rome, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte), inspired by Mattia Preti’s frescoes in Sant'Andrea della Valle, draws closer to the Roman Baroque.

His early portraits, such as that of Jan Jachym, Count of Pachta (1696; National Gallery Prague, Sternberg Palace), a Baroque, richly painted work in the tradition of Anthony van Dyck, are extraordinarily intense. Trevisani’s first major contribution to Roman art was his decoration of the chapel of the Crucifix in San Silvestro in Capite, Rome, with canvases of the Passion of Jesus and frescoes on the vault and pendentives of Putti Displaying the Instruments of the Passion. He may have won the commission through the offices of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, whom he probably met shortly after Cardinal Chigi’s death, and who became his most important patron. In these works Trevisani drew closer to the art of Giovanni Lanfranco and Guido Reni, as in his Road to Calvary, which is indebted both to Reni’s St. Andrew Led to Martyrdom (Rome, San Gregorio Magno al Celio) and also to Lanfranco’s Road to Calvary in the Sacchetti Chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome.

Trevisani’s response to these works was further modified by his awareness of the art of Ludovico Gimignani and Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, who were also decorating chapels in San Silvestro in Capite. Nevertheless, Trevisani adopted a livelier chiaroscuro than either of these artists and used sharper contrasts. Indeed, there is little doubt that he was also inspired by Francesco Solimena and learned from him how to enrich the rather tired echoes of Maratta’s classicism with a new energy and freedom of handling. Thus his lunette painting, the Agony in the Garden, while modelled on Maratta’s painting in Sant'Isidoro a Capo le Case, Rome, has greater dramatic power.

A similar development occurs throughout his decorations, and the Crucifixion returns to motifs from the art of the Carracci, yet reinterpreted through the more modern vision of Solimena. Trevisani’s highly innovative scheme thus marks the beginnings of a new sensibility, of a softer and more sentimental art.

Trevisani was profoundly affected by the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia, with which he became associated through Cardinal Ottoboni, one of its most distinguished members. In these circles he also met Filippo Juvarra and the musician Arcangelo Corelli, who owned Trevisani’s Virgin and Child (a copy of an original by Carlo Cignani) and a large portrait of Cardinal Ottoboni. Another portrait of Cardinal Ottoboni (1700–09; Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum), though spontaneous, is deeply rooted in the Roman portrait tradition that runs from Bernini to Andrea Sacchi, and from Jacob Ferdinand Voet to Maratta. Trevisani was well known at the Accademia by 1704, when Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, its custodian, sang his praises in a poem, and Trevisani himself had some success as a poet. However, it was not until 1712 that he actually became a member of the Accademia, taking the name of Sanzio Echeiano.