Giuseppe Marchesi was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Bologna. He was also known as il Sansone for his herculean build. He was first a pupil of the painter Aureliano Milani and then of Marcantonio Franceschini.

Giuseppe Marchesi was born in Bologna on 19 July 1699.

His first teacher was the bolognese painter Aureliano Milani until 1719, when Milani left Bologna for Rome. So, Marchesi entered the workshop of Marcantonio Franceschini, at the time the best exponent of the classicist style in Bologna, and maybe in Europe, at least until the affirmation of Donato Creti.

From Aureliano Milani Giuseppe Marchesi borrowed Carracci's taste for some athletic male figures, and at the same time derived from Franceschini a wonderful lightness in representing images of women, children and angels, with a very personal style, that always maintained the ability of Franceschini to render clear complexions suffused with gentle redness and harmony in composition.