The Italian Master Who Painted England: Antonio Verrio and the Rise of Baroque Mural Art Antonio Verrio, born in Lecce, Kingdom of Naples, in 1639, stands as a pivotal figure in English art history – the artist largely responsible for introducing the grandeur and dynamism of Baroque mural painting to a nation poised between Renaissance restraint and the exuberance of a new aesthetic. His thirty-year service to the English crown wasn’t merely a professional undertaking; it was a cultural import, a deliberate infusion of Italian artistic sensibilities that transformed the interiors of palaces…