Cecchino del Salviati was a Florentine Mannerist painter, a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. Originally Francesco de' Rossi, he adopted his name from his patron Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, with whom he went to Rome c. 1530 and for whom he painted the work that established his reputation there - the fresco of the Visitation in S. Giovanni Decollato. In 1539 he travelled to Venice, and from the 1540s led a restless life, working mainly in Florence and Rome, but also visiting Fontainebleau in 1556-57. He was one of the leading fresco decorators of his day, specializing in learned and elaborate multi-figure compositions, typically Mannerist in their artificiality and abstruseness, and similar in style to those of his friend Vasari (although Salviati was an artist of higher caliber). His finest works are perhaps the frescoes on the story of the ancient tyrant Furius Camillus in the Sala dell' Udienza of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, intended as an allegory of Cosimo de' Medici's reign.
Salviati also made designs for tapestries and was noted for his portraits, which were Florentine in their direct characterization but north Italian in their richness in colour.