Federico Barocci, born at Urbino, Italy, had received his earliest apprenticeship with his father, Ambrogio Barocci, a sculptor of some local eminence.
He was then apprenticed with the painter Battista Franco in Urbino.
He had accompanied his uncle, Bartolomeo Genga to Pesaro, then in 1548 to Rome, where he had worked in the preeminent studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari.
After passing four years at Rome, Barocci had returned to his native Urbino, where his first work was a St. Margaret executed for the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.
Invited back to Rome by Pope Pius IV to assist in the decoration of the Vatican Belvedere Palace at Rome, he has painted the Virgin Mary and infant, with several Saints and a ceiling in fresco, representing the Annunciation.
While completing the decorations for the Vatican during this second sojourn, Barocci falls ill with intestinal complaints.
Fearing he has been poisoned by jealous rivals, and that his illness is terminal, he leaves Rome in 1563.