Lot Essay
A restlessly explorative, highly versatile, and prolific artist, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was active in his native Genoa, as well as in Rome, Naples and Mantua, where he concluded his career working at the Gonzaga court. Castiglione was remarkable among Italian artists of his period for his responsiveness to foreign influences, as well as to artistic developments across Italy. Though Castiglione’s style was grounded in the Tuscan-inflected Mannerism practiced by many of the artists in his native Genoa, he also absorbed the fluid manner of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, both of whom had also worked in the international port city. A certain Flemish naturalism derives from the animal-filled paintings of Sinibaldo Scorza and Jan Roos, while Castiglione’s more poetic approach to landscape certainly relied upon the example of Nicolas Poussin, whom Castiglione knew in Rome during the early 1630s. An aura of fantasy permeates many of his works, recalling Salvator Rosa, while his densely populated canvases owe something to the legacy of the Bassano family. Castiglione’s paintings mainly depict religious subjects, but, as in the present canvas, they are often most remarkable for their superb treatment of animals and still life details, often rendered in rural settings.
The present canvas relates to the passage in Genesis (31:17-18) which describes the moment when 'Jacob put his children and his wives on camels, and he drove all his livestock ahead of him, along with all the goods he had accumulated in Paddan Aram, to go to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan.' Journeys undertaken by Old Testament patriarchs were a favorite theme of the artist; he was even referred to in court documents of the period as the artist 'il quale dipingeva spesso il viaggi di giacobbe' ('who often painted Jacob’s travels'). Castiglione seems not to have appreciated disparaging comments regarding his excessive repetition of compositions, and on one occasion, following such an insult from a fellow painter, he reacted violently and was forced to flee Rome. Indeed, Castiglione’s peripatetic career was perhaps not unlike the nomadic existence of the patriarchs he so often painted, as the artist moved across the Italian peninsula, himself in a lifelong state of exodus.
The present painting, with its rich coloring and romantic deep blue mountainous landscape, appears to date from Castiglione’s maturity, when the artist adopted a flamboyant and vigorous proto-Baroque style. Timothy Standring has suggested a date around 1650, contemporary with the Offering to Pan in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (fig. 1), and a Pastoral Landscape in the Accademia Ligustica, Genoa.