Friday, May 31, 2019

Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) - Easel Paintings

Luca Cambiaso
Virgin and Child with Donor and Angels in Lunette
(upper section of altarpiece with St Erasmus, St Roch and St Sebastian)
1550
oil on canvas
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Castagna, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
St Erasmus, St Roch and St Sebastian
1550
oil on canvas
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Castagna, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist
ca. 1550
oil on panel
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Luca Cambiaso
Venus and Cupid on Seashells
ca. 1560-65
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Luca Cambiaso
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1564-65
oil on canvas
Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa

"More rapidly than in his decorations, in his easel pictures Luca veered away from the obvious apparatus of Maniera.  The change is now observable to us mainly in religious works, but it is by no means confined to them alone.  By 1570 most of his religious pictures had assumed an explicit Counter-Reformation content, simply illustrating an obvious and sober popular piety, and the form and the descriptive mode devised to suit this content is a paradigm of Counter-Maniera.  The potential to make such a style may have been part of Luca's aesthetic disposition since his beginnings; he had moved towards it even in the 1550s, apparently more in consequence of aesthetic than religious attitudes; but in the course of the seventh decade the latter came to be the determining factor.  Until his departure for Spain in 1583 (where he preceded Federico Zuccaro and Tibaldi as chief painter in the Escorial) a large part of Luca's production consisted in the manufacture of simplistic works of arte sacra, almost perfectly exemplifying the conjunction only this genre could call for of naturalism adequate to inspire belief, abstractness and extreme legibility.  The degree of banality to which Luca aspires – so wholly antithetic to his earlier Maniera search for ingenuity of conceit – is, at least throughout most of the seventies, apparently in the painter's wholly self-aware control.  Some of the altarpieces, destined for the use of public piety, attain the dubious but still noteworthy character of anti-art.  But smaller devotional paintings, using a moderated version of the same vocabulary, still make witticisms and astonishments with play of the abstracting forms and evoke fine, oblique emotions, of a Maniera cast, from the persons and situations they illustrate.  With another slightest shift in handling, antique subjects, some of them quasi-erotica, recover still more of the aspect and effects of the Maniera.  Yet the basic formal matter Luca employs is, in all these cases, close to interchangeable, demonstrating perhaps more efficiently than in any of Luca's contemporaries what the relationship between Maniera and its counterpart style is."

Luca Cambiaso
Venus and Cupid
1570
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Luca Cambiaso
Birth of the Virgin
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Luca Cambiaso
Esther before Ahasuerus
ca. 1565-70
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Luca Cambiaso
Pietà
ca. 1571
oil on canvas
Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
St Jerome
ca. 1560-80
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro
 
Luca Cambiaso
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1570-80
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Luca Cambiaso
Madonna of the Candle
ca. 1570-75
oil on canvas
Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Holy Family with St John the Baptist
ca. 1578
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

"Differently but not much less than the Maniera, the Counter-Maniera is an artificial style and almost as arbitrary.  Nevertheless, it is one of the elements in Counter-Maniera's difference from Maniera that, just as it pretends to classicizing rationale (but achieves no more than classicist formulae for it), so also it pretends to naturalism.  But to a still essentially Mannerist mentality, as Luca's Counter-Maniera mind still is, naturalism means either an un-fancy  kind of narrative or psychological datum that can be illustrated (not necessarily, therefore, an effect of visual mimesis) or an aspect of visual experience that can be turned to use as a concetto.  The first of these 'naturalisms' inclines Luca towards frequent and genuinely captivating incidents of genre-like intimacy, usually in smaller works; the second leads him to combine these with the theme of the nocturne.  In both respects, and more especially the latter, his tendencies coincide with those of the Cremonese Campi, Antonio in particular.  Antonio and Luca are so close in the time of their first essays in notturni that we cannot surely assign precedence to either, nor assess the possible direction of an influence between them.  Luca's notturni may well have been an an independent and coincidental growth, with one of its sources in a singular facet of the Genoese art of Perino.  In any case, it is Luca who is by far the more frequent worker in the nocturnal genre, more subtle and capricious in his exploitation of its possibilities, and far more poetic in the effects he achieves in it of visual as well as psychological sensation.  Antonio Campi's nocturnes had some role in the formation of the seeing of Caravaggio, who turned them to account in his new search for reality.  It may be significant for the qualities of Mannerism that persist more evidently in Luca's nocturnes that, by a route still unexplained, he seems to have been a source for Georges de La Tour, whose nocturnes so poetically transcend reality."

– quoted passages by S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Luca Cambiaso
Holy Family with St John the Baptist
before 1585
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

attributed to Luca Cambiaso
Death of Lucretia
before 1585
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) - Ceiling Frescoes

Luca Cambiaso
Scenes of Antique History and Myth
Apollo assisting the Trojans to slay the Greeks (detail)
1544
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Doria-Spinola, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Scenes of Antique History and Myth
1544
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Doria-Spinola, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Scenes of Antique History and Myth
1544
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Doria-Spinola, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Scenes of Antique History and Myth
1544
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Doria-Spinola, Genoa

"Of all the painters of the sixteenth-century school of Genoa only one ascends to an importance that is more than local: Luca Cambiaso (1527-85).  Only he among the painters of the North Italian centres may lay claim to rival the genius of Pellegrino Tibaldi (his exact contemporary), whom he resembles not only in the dimension of his gifts but in their kind.  Even the course of evolution of their styles is somewhat similar, though Luca's creative energy in painting seems, by comparison, unquenchable.  Luca was the son of Giovanni Cambiaso (ca. 1495-ca. 1579), a painter of the elder Calvi's generation, to whose instruction Luca could not have been much obliged.  He learned, instead, from almost every importation he could find in Genoa, from Perino chiefly, but, almost equally important, from Pordenone and from Giulio Romano also.  Further, there is the likelihood that just before the time of his first extant work, a fresco decoration of important scale [details above] in the Doria palace that is now the Prefettura (1544), he had been through Lombardy, and perhaps even visited Rome."

"In 1544 Luca was seventeen, and in the Prefettura decoration (scenes of antique history and myth) his precocity, phenomenal as it is, is not so astonishing as his explosive élan of form and idea, or the sense of individuality of style with which he invests what he has learned.  It seems to be by synthesis of Perino's Genoese Maniera and Pordenone's plastic style, more than by any needful reference to Roman art, that Luca conceived this style.  However, the pressures under which he fused these main components produced a result of extreme modernity.  In its large forms it extends the mode of Pordenone (classicized to reconcile it with Perino) into an abstractness and a play upon illusionist conceit that are more according to the intellectual disposition of Maniera, yet almost aggressively devoid of grace; conversely, the mode employed in the smaller scenes is an extension of the ornamental style of Perino, closely analogous to what the avant-garde of high Maniera evolved in contemporary Rome.  The violence of statement of these frescoes soon subsided, as did the extremism of their geometry of large form."

Luca Cambiaso
Miracle of the Ethiopian Dragons
before 1559
fresco
Chiesa di San Matteo, Genoa

"From the mid century onward Luca began to moderate his large-scale mode with effects taken into it from his maniera piccola, and within the course of a decade the result was an approximate consistency of recognizable Maniera.  The vault decoration of the Doria church of S. Matteo [directly above] (before 1559, in collaboration with Il Bergamasco) is an indication of the thoroughness with which Luca could assimilate Maniera graces and sophistications, but yet not wholly sublimate his taste for arbitrary geometric form." 

Luca Cambiaso
Abduction of the Sabine Women
Groups of Warriors in a Landscape (detail)
ca. 1565
ceiling fresco
Villa Imperiale di Terralba, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Abduction of the Sabine Women
Warrior and Woman in a Landscape (detail)
ca. 1565
ceiling fresco
Villa Imperiale di Terralba, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Abduction of the Sabine Women
Female Allegorical Figures (border detail)
ca. 1565
ceiling fresco
Villa Imperiale di Terralba, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Abduction of the Sabine Women
Female Allegorical Figures (border detail)
ca. 1565
ceiling fresco
Villa Imperiale di Terralba, Genoa

"The middle sixties were the time of Luca's finest efforts as a frescante, conspicuously in the Villa Imperiale at Genoa-Terralba [above] and in the Palazzo Meridiana [below].  In both schemes, in the former especially, the academicizing of Maniera is a process that has been turned to positive much more than negative effect.  Luca's geometric tendency of mind has been applied to the manipulation of volumes and spaces in a way which, while basically that of the Maniera conceit, endows the concetto with the force of a high formal rhetoric.  Nowhere else is the notion of the decorator's quadro riportato so ingeniously made the matter of illusionistic paradox."

– quoted passages by S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Luca Cambiaso
Ulysses slaying the Suitors of Penelope
Central panel (detail)
1565
ceiling fresco
Palazzo della Meridiana, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Ulysses slaying the Suitors of Penelope
Figure of Commander (border detail)
1565
ceiling fresco
Palazzo della Meridiana, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Ulysses slaying the Suitors of Penelope
Figure of Warrior (border detail)
1565
ceiling fresco
Palazzo della Meridiana, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Ulysses slaying the Suitors of Penelope
Figure of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (border detail)
1565
ceiling fresco
Palazzo della Meridiana, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Construction of the Warehouse of the Genoese in Trebizond
ca. 1571
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Lercari-Parodi, Genoa

Luca Cambiaso
Construction of the Warehouse of the Genoese in Trebizond
Seated Figures (border detail)
ca. 1571
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Lercari-Parodi, Genoa

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Giovanni Battista Castello, Il Genovese (1547-1637)

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Reliquary
Central miniature of The Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1600
watercolor on vellum
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Central miniature of The Annunciation
ca. 1600
watercolor on vellum
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of Christ giving the Keys to St Peter
1598
watercolor and gouache on vellum
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Castello (1547-1637), called Il Genovese (to distinguish him from his unrelated contemporary of the same name, the history painter and architect Giovanni Battista Castello (1509-1569) called Il Bergamasco), was born in Genoa, the elder brother of the better-known Mannerist painter Bernardo Castello (1557-1629).  Il Genovese specialized almost exclusively in devotional miniatures on vellum, a genre he revived and expanded from models found in late-Medieval and early-Renaissance illuminated manuscripts.  His works, often incorporated into reliquaries and portable altars, were prized by European monarchs and aristocrats as adornments for their personal chapels or cabinets of curiosities.  Some few examples (like those above) are preserved in major museums, but the majority of the artist's surviving paintings remain (like those below) in private collections.

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Central miniature of the Virgin and Child enthroned
with Pope Pius V and Saints in Adoration
surrounded by 23 smaller miniatures
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Detail of surrounding miniatures 
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Detail of surrounding miniatures
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Detail of central miniature
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Detail of surrounding miniatures
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Portable Altarpiece
Detail of surrounding miniatures
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of The Adoration of the Shepherds
before 1637
watercolor on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of The Circumcision
before 1637
tempera on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of The Adoration of the Magi
before 1637
gouache on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of The Agony in the Garden
before 1637
watercolor and tempera on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Genovese)
Miniature of The Descent from the Cross 
1600
tempera on vellum
private collection

Giovanni Battista Castello, Il Bergamasco (1509-1569)

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Two Draped Male Figures
(study for fresco, The Calling of Matthew)
ca. 1559
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
The Calling of Matthew
(study for fresco)
ca. 1559
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
The Calling of Matthew
ca. 1559
fresco
Chiesa di San Matteo, Genoa

"Giovanni Battista Castello (1509-1569) – Italian painter, sculptor and architect, born at Gandino in the Valle Serlana, in the territory of Bergamo.  He is commonly called Il Bergamasco to distinguish him from Giovanni Battista Castello of Genoa (1547-1637), called Il Genovese, who was a miniature-painter.  When young, Il Bergamasco was entrusted to the care of Qurelio Busso of Crema, a pupil of Polidoro da Caravaggio.  That painter took him to Genoa, and after some time left him in that city, unprotected and without means, but considerably advanced in his studies.  A Genoese nobleman, Tobia Pallavicino, took the young Castello under his protection and sent him to Rome to study the great masters there, where he became very proficient.  On his return to Genoa, he decorated the palace of his protector and painted some frescoes in the church of San Marcellino.  He made a great reputation by his painting of the martyrdom of St Sebastian in the monastery of San Sebastiano and, together with his younger friend Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) was employed by the Duke Grimaldi in the Nunziata di Portoria in Genoa, Castello painting on the ceiling of the choir the Savior as judge of the world, and Luca painting the laterals with the fate of the Blessed and the Reprobate.  . . .  Towards the latter part of his life Il Bergamasco was invited by Philip II to visit Spain, and was employed by that monarch in the palace of the Pardo, which he ornamented with subjects from Ovid.  He also executed some works in the Escorial and other palaces, and died in Madrid holding the office of architect of the royal palaces."

– extracts from the Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Appleton, 1908)

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Ulysses in the Palace of Alcinous
ca. 1540-50
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Ulysses at the Plough (Ulysses feigning Madness)
ca. 1540-50
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Venus admonishing Cupid
(design for tapestry)
ca. 1555-65
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

designed by Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Venus admonishing Cupid
ca. 1555-65
tapestry
(silk and wool, woven in Brussels)
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Venus seeking help from Juno, Ceres, and Jupiter
(design for tapestry)
ca. 1555-65
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Seated Jupiter with Neptune
c1560-
drawing-
Royal Collection, Great Britain

"A drawing of Jupiter with his foot on a globe, an eagle between his legs, and Neptune behind him.  This work is a squared study for the fresco in Villa di Tobia-Pallavicini, Genoa.  Castello executed frescoes throughout the villa of his patron, Tobia Pallavicino.  The Council of the Gods in the vault of the Salone depicts the deliberations of Jupiter over whether Odysseus should be allowed to end his wanderings and return home.  Castello's frescoes owed much to paintings that he had seen in Rome some years earlier – this figure is based on Jupiter in Raphael's own Council of the Gods in the Villa Farnesina.  . . .  Castello's figure of Jupiter follows Raphael's in his general attitude and in the pose of the legs, though he changed the positions of the head, arms, and eagle, and the Neptune behind Jupiter bears little relationship to Raphael's equivalent figure."

– from curator's notes at the Royal Collection

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Psyche telling her Sisters of her Lover
ca. 1560-69
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Statue of Standing Roman Warrior on a Pedestal
before 1569
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
St Domenico prays over the body of the youth Napoleone,
killed in a fall from a Horse

before 1569
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Pietà
before 1569
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Huntsman on Horseback chasing a Stag in a Wood, watched by a Maiden
ca. 1566-69
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

attributed to Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Studies for the Chariot of Apollo
ca. 1566-69
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

attributed to Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Horatius Cocles on Horseback defending the Sublician Bridge against Lars Porsenna and the Etruscans
ca. 1566-69
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Giovanni Battista Castello (Il Bergamasco)
Mars and Apollo
ca. 1566-69
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid