Portraits of five artists, Giotto, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Brunelleschi

Salviati's Portraits of Five Artists — Giotto, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Brunelleschi — in the Fitzwilliam Museum belongs to a specifically Florentine tradition of honoring the canonical founding fathers of Florentine artistic achievement. The grouping is essentially the same as that celebrated by Vasari in the first edition of his Lives of the Artists (1550), reflecting Vasari's own circle — Salviati and Vasari were friends and colleagues — and the broader Florentine humanist desire to establish an artistic pantheon equivalent to the ancient poets and philosophers. All five subjects had been dead for decades or centuries by the time Salviati painted them; he constructed their images from existing portraits, descriptions, and imagination. The Fitzwilliam holds this as an unusual example of artistic historiography rendered as group portraiture.

Canvas in oil, the multi-portrait composition required Salviati to differentiate five figures across the picture plane while maintaining compositional unity. Each figure carries attributes or period-specific details that identify him for a learned audience. The paint handling shows the controlled, refined surface typical of Salviati's mature work, with each face given individualized treatment despite the imaginary nature of the sittings.