Raffaello Sernesi was an Italian painter and medallist associated with the Macchiaioli group.
He was born in Florence in modest circumstances. After an apprenticeship to a local engraver, he enrolled at the Accademia of Florence in 1856, where he studied under Antonio Ciseri. As part of his training he made copies of the works of quattrocento artists such as Masaccio and Botticelli. In 1858 his father died, and Sernesi left the Academy in order to help support his family as an engraver and medallist. In 1859 he began frequenting the Caffè Michelangiolo and met the artists of the Macchiaioli, including Odoardo Borrani, who became a close friend.
Sernesi served as a volunteer in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. Upon his return to Florence later that year, he made his first plein air landscape paintings. Norma Broude says these works are characterized by "the azure and terracotta hues typical both of Tuscany's landscape and its fresco tradition" and says they reveal "a taste for rectilinear clarity in spatial and compositional organization".