Santi di Tito was an Italian painter, draughtsman and architect. Stylistically, he can be classified at the transition between Mannerism and early Baroque, and was therefore an important precursor of the Baroque. His teachers were Bastiano da Montecarlo, Angnolo Bronzino and Baccio Bandinelli. In 1554, he became a member of the painters' guild in Florence. Between 1558 and 1564, Santi worked in Rome, where his first commission were oval medallion frescoes of the four seasons in the Vatican which are still to be seen there today. Santi's Florentine Mannerism fused in Rome with the classical Renaissance style of Raphael, whose work he studied and copied. Back in Florence, he joined the Accademia del Disegno, whose members often worked at the Medici court. The court painter Giorgio Vasari defined the style of the works, so that Santi's work from this period is strongly influenced by Vasari's Mannerism. Only after Vasari's death in 1574, when Santi independently executed numerous commissions for churches, monasteries and private commissioners, did he return to his naturalistic style influenced by the early Renaissance. His narrative paintings with a clear religious message were consistent with the requirements of the Counter-Reformation that art should both religiously instruct and emotionally move the viewer. Santi di Tito also taught numerous students in his workshop, and as an architect, he designed villas, residential buildings, a church façade and a monastery. When he died in 1602, he was acknowledged by the Academy as the most important painter in Florence.