Anton Domenico Gabbiani trained in Florence, Rome, and Venice before returning home to work for the Florentine court of the Medici family where Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, became his most important patron. Ferdinando was an accomplished musician, called the Orpheus of Princes, who commissioned music composed especially for him, to be performed in a theatre built at his villa in Pratolino. Ferdinando commissioned Gabbiani to paint a number of group portraits of musicians and staff of the Medici household in addition to frescos of religious, classical, and mythological subjects in a number of other Florentine palaces and villas. After Ferdinando’s death in 1713, Gabbiani continued to receive commissions from the Medici family.