Career
He may have trained with Marco Zoppo and was first mentioned as a painter in 1486. His earliest known work is the Felicini Madonna, which is signed and dated 1494. He himself trained Marcantonio Raimondi and several other artists.
He produced niellos, in which Raimondi first learnt to engrave, soon excelling his master, according to Vasari.
Raphael"s Santa Cecilia is supposed to have produced such a feeling of inferiority in Francia that it caused him to die of depression. However, as his friendship with Raphael is now well-known, this story has been discredited.
He died in Bologna. Pope-Hennessy, John & Kanter, Laurence B. (1987).
The Robert Lehman Collection I, Italian Paintings. New York, Princeton: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press. (see index; plate 91).