Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693) was an Italian scholar and art historian from Bologna, best known for his biographies of Baroque artists titled Felsina pittrice, published in 1678. Together with his contemporary Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Malvasia is considered "among the best informed and most intelligent historians and critics of art who ever lived."

Giovanni Pietro Bellori, also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian art theorist, painter and antiquarian, who is best known for his work Lives of the Artists, considered the seventeenth-century equivalent to Vasari's Vite. His Vite de' Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni, published in 1672, was influential in consolidating and promoting the theoretical case for classical idealism in art. As an art historical biographer, he favoured classicising artists rather than Baroque artists to the extent of omitting some of the key artistic figures of 17th-century art altogether.