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Born San Giovanni Valdarno, 1955
Maestro
Maestro
Massimo Callossi
Painter, fresco master, pupil of Pietro Annigoni
Painter, fresco master, pupil of Pietro Annigoni
Maestro Massimo Callossi · Florence
Biography
Maestro Massimo Callossi was born in 1955 in San Giovanni Valdarno. His father, a “Magister Operis” (master builder), introduced him from an early age to the ancient art of building and the use of traditional construction materials.
It was along the river Ema, celebrated by Dante, where Callossi experienced his first encounter with art as a child. There, a small number of artists would sometimes gather to paint from life. This experience instilled in the young Callossi the importance of mastering traditional artistic techniques at a time when the arts were moving toward more conceptually based approaches.
Callossi started attending by day the few remaining traditional workshops in Florence and, in the evenings, the “Scuola libera del nudo” art school.
In 1969 he met Maestro Pietro Annigoni, a decisive moment. Callossi became his pupil and, in the early 1970s, attended his studio in Borgo degli Albizi. It was Annigoni himself who then sent him to Maestro Romano Stefanelli.
With Stefanelli, Annigoni's pupil and collaborator, he formed a lifelong working partnership: for decades the two painted frescoes together, from the Abbey of Montecassino to the Sacro Convento in Assisi.
With Stefanelli, Massimo Callossi frescoed the choir vault of the Abbey of Montecassino and, in Assisi, a cycle of scenes from the life of Saint Francis in the former reliquary hall of the Sacro Convento, based on an old design by Annigoni. Among his own works is the fresco in the sacristy of San Michele Arcangelo at Ponte Buggianese (2006-08).
Today, numerous frescoes carried out according to the ancient “rules of art” by Maestro Callossi can be found in many places throughout Italy.
Maestro Callossi is one of the last living pupils of Pietro Annigoni and a keeper of the bottega tradition: the workshop model through which the Renaissance masters transmitted their knowledge directly, hand to hand.
To learn from him and see him at work is truly a unique experience.
“One of the last living pupils of Pietro Annigoni, he teaches the fresco of the Florentine tradition, the line that runs from Giotto to Michelangelo and Raphael.”
Inside Module I · June 2026
Frescoes executed by Maestro Callossi, in the Roman and Renaissance tradition.
Portrait study in the Roman and Renaissance tradition
Monumental apse fresco · Collegiata di San Lorenzo, Santa Croce sull'Arno.
Fresco on embrice · Florentine Renaissance method
The Roots
Pietro Annigoni (1910–1988) was one of the twentieth century's greatest figurative painters, internationally renowned for his portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John XXIII, and a passionate restorer of the fresco technique in its most classical form.
Maestro Callossi met Annigoni in 1969 and became his pupil in his Florence studio, absorbing not only the craft but the entire philosophy of the bottega: a philosophy that prizes direct transmission, patient practice, and absolute fidelity to the materials and methods of the Renaissance.
This is the tradition that Maestro Callossi now passes on to his students at the Florence Academy of Affresco.
Resurrection and Deposition of Christ · Annigoni, Church of San Michele Arcangelo, Ponte Buggianese
Learn the fresco of the Florentine tradition directly from Maestro Callossi, in Florence. Applications are reviewed personally by the Maestro.
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