Francesco Maria Santinelli (1627-1697) was an Italian marquis, count, Marinist poet, librettist and alchemist. In Senigallia, Christina, Queen of Sweden was welcomed in verse by the handsome Santinelli and his brother, Ludovico, an acrobat and dancer.[1] Both seem to have been accomplished scoundrels.[2] A year later Ludovico was witness and participant at the murder of Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi at Fontainebleau. (Francesco Maria was on business in Rome during this infamous event.) After the scandal, she promised Pierre Chanut that Ludivico and his two helpers would have to leave her court.[3]
Santinelli was an ardent Hermetic poet, and, as Anna Maria Partini has shown, he is also one of the first known Italian poets to allude to the Rosicrucians in poetic verse.[4]