Senesino

thumb|Senesino c. 1720 right|thumb|Senesino in 1735, by Van Haecken after Hudson thumb|Portrait of the contralto castrato Francesco Bernardi, better known under his stage name Senesino; at the same time a parody of the castrati and their singing – and the wealth they earned with it. The lines beneath the portrait read, in Italian and English: "Renown'd Sienna gave him birth and name / Kind Heaven his Voice and Harmony his Fame / While here the Great and Fair their Tribute bring / The Deaf may wonder whence his Merits spring / But all think Fortune just, that hear him sing".

Francesco Bernardi (; 31 October 1686 – 27 November 1758), known as Senesino ( or traditionally ), was an Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel. He was also involved in a public scandal with the soprano Anastasia Robinson in 1724, which was circulated widely by the satirist Jonathan Swift, and inspired a number of anonymously-written obscene, misogynistic, and at times sexually subversive epistles written between 1724 and 1736 which have become a topic of study among scholars of Restoration literature.