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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Camillus accepting the office of Dictator ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Camillus receiving Supplicants ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Camillus founding a Temple ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
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| Francesco Salviati Sala dell'Udienza Story of Camillus - Battle with the Gauls ca. 1543-45 fresco Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
"In 1543 Salviati returned to Florence, where he was to stay until 1548; Duke Cosimo's régime, now firmly controlled, autocratic, and relatively prosperous, offered opportunities of patronage almost comparable to those of Roman society. It was at the beginning of this time that Salviati's personality and style both came to full fruition. In close coincidence with Bronzino's whole attainment of a high Maniera, Salviati achieved the same, but in a variant that joined the draftsmanship, the wit and elegance of a native Florentine to the tradition and the repertory of Rome. His first major exercise in Florence was the fresco decoration in the Palazzo Vecchio of the Sala dell'Udienza (October 1543-1545), where the theme supplied to him was the celebration of Cosimo's régime in the guise of the history of a great – but unpopular – antique tyrant, the Roman Camillus. The narrative scenes accumulate the most learned and elaborate battery of archaeological reminiscence, as if for the edification of the Florentines who had not the advantage of a Roman education, and they are framed by allegories, no less learned, of almost hieroglyphic abstruseness. High-keyed in colour and polished to an extreme degree, the single forms in the narratives take on the three-dimensionality of sculpture, while the whole design, by a further act of antique recollection, approximates late classical relief. Giulio Romano's precedent serves Salviati at least as much as antiquity itself. But working everywhere upon this sculpture-like substance, insistently instilling it with life, is Salviati's line. It shapes forms now swiftly, now as if against resistance, and with an energy that is always at the same time intense and utterly controlled. Line makes ornament upon the forms and makes ornament of them, even while it helps define the seeming truth of their existence. The power of feeling involved in the making of the image is not less than in the Florentine early Mannerists (nor is the sense of its infusion in the draftsman's hand), but it is bent chiefly towards a different end, to the extreme, almost infinitesimally probing exploitation of the image's ornamental sense. Rosso and Pontormo had made their artifice of form responsive to narrative or dramatic values; here, however, intense feeling is an effect of the ornament alone. The temper of this affect may be disparate from the subject matter: among Salviati's scenes even the violence of battle is divorced from its ordinary content."
– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)
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| Francesco Salviati Cavalry Skirmish ca. 1530-40 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Francesco Salviati Mounted Soldier ca. 1535-45 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Francesco Salviati Warrior with Raised Shield undated drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Francesco Salviati Roman Soldier ca. 1548-49 drawing British Museum |