.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Vividly colored and richly detailed, this fine gouache on vellum is characteristic of the elegant and highly finished miniatures of Giovanni Battista Castello. The artist, called il Genovese to distinguish him from his contemporary Giovanni Battista Castello from Bergamo, trained and worked as a goldsmith and only later in life established himself as a painter. Praised by 16th Century poets and writers for his artistic gifts, Castello worked for prestigious patrons in Spain and in his native Genoa.
Castello established a workshop specialized in the production of small religious compositions intended for private devotion. These were extremely popular among collectors and wealthy patrons, as they were used for private meditation according to the ideals of the Counter-Reformation. Numerous inventories of Genoese collections mention ‘paintings and small paintings’ by Castello, kept in the most private rooms of the house (C. Di Fabio, Gio. Battista Castello, 'Il genovese'. Miniatura e devozione a Genova fra Cinque e Seicento, exhib. cat., Genoa, Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, 1990, pp. 11-17).
Typically executed with bodycolor on a single sheet of vellum these small compositions were mounted to a thin wood panel, like here, or to a copper sheet or a light cardboard. These works, their size varying from a few inches to larger composition like the present one, were typically framed in wood or silver. Another Entombment by Castello, also dating from 1622, similar in composition, setting and figure types, is in a private collection (ibid., no. 42). Often sources of inspiration for Castello’s iconography were the drawings of Luca Cambiaso, with whom he worked in Spain.
Dr Elena De Laurentiis will include the present work in her forthcoming monograph on the artist.
Castello established a workshop specialized in the production of small religious compositions intended for private devotion. These were extremely popular among collectors and wealthy patrons, as they were used for private meditation according to the ideals of the Counter-Reformation. Numerous inventories of Genoese collections mention ‘paintings and small paintings’ by Castello, kept in the most private rooms of the house (C. Di Fabio, Gio. Battista Castello, 'Il genovese'. Miniatura e devozione a Genova fra Cinque e Seicento, exhib. cat., Genoa, Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, 1990, pp. 11-17).
Typically executed with bodycolor on a single sheet of vellum these small compositions were mounted to a thin wood panel, like here, or to a copper sheet or a light cardboard. These works, their size varying from a few inches to larger composition like the present one, were typically framed in wood or silver. Another Entombment by Castello, also dating from 1622, similar in composition, setting and figure types, is in a private collection (ibid., no. 42). Often sources of inspiration for Castello’s iconography were the drawings of Luca Cambiaso, with whom he worked in Spain.
Dr Elena De Laurentiis will include the present work in her forthcoming monograph on the artist.