Domenico Piola

Italian, 1627 - 1703

BiographyBorn Genoa, 1627; died Genoa, 8 April 1703.

Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and designer. He was the leading artist in Genoa in the second half of the 17th century, providing ceiling frescoes for many Genoese churches and palaces and producing paintings for private collectors. He was also a prolific draughtsman, whose many designs for thesis pages and book illustrations promoted his work throughout Europe. The enormous and multifarious productivity of his studio, his numerous collaborations with other artists and the fact that most of his most ambitious projects have been destroyed have discouraged any systematic study of his work.

1. Paintings and drawings.

After his initial training with Pellegro at the age of seven, Domenico studied under Pellegro’s teacher, Giovanni Domenico Cappellino (1580–1651), for four years. These periods of training may have contributed to the monumentality of his compositions and draughtsmanship, but his early copies after Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and his working relationship with Valerio Castello (ii) in the late 1640s and early 1650s encouraged the development of a more Baroque style. His early work is highly eclectic; his Martyrdom and Ascension of St James (1647; Genoa, S Giacomo della Marina) follows Castello in its debt to the elongated figures of Lombard painters such as Cerano and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, whereas the dated Last Supper (1649; Albenga, Mus. Dioc.) and fresco fragments of his destroyed decorations in S Domenico, Genoa (1651; Genoa, Mus. Accad. Ligustica B.A.), are more akin to the robust figures of Peter Paul Rubens, Castiglione, Gioacchino Assereto and Orazio de’ Ferrari. There is a similar contrast between his frescoes for S Maria in Passione, Genoa (c. 1650; fragments, Genoa, Mus. S Agostino), done in collaboration with Castello and employing the latter’s figure style, and his vault medallion, Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1650; Genoa, S Marta), positioned next to Castello’s Annunciation medallion but deriving its style more from Castiglione.

The elements of Castiglione’s work that Piola absorbed led to the undulating figures, streamlined twisting draperies and diagonal composition of his drawing The Communion of Clare of Montefalco (London, BM), and his paintings in the Oratory of St John the Baptist at Spotorno: the Assumption (1664) and the Nativity (1669); a large lunette, Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1661; Genoa, S Siro), and an altarpiece, St Thomas Aquinas before the Cross (c. 1666; Genoa, SS Annunziata). These works, with the fresco of St Francis Xavier Meeting the King of Bungo (1666–7) in SS Gerolamo e Francesco Saverio, Genoa, show that Piola’s style was fully mature by 1670. Piola responded to the echoes of Parmigianino’s style that he found in the work of Castello. The influence of Parmese art was strengthened after the return of Gregorio de’ Ferrari from Parma (c. 1672). Ferrari brought with him the charming qualities of Correggio’s style and encouraged Piola’s own predilection for diagonal movement, bright colours and strongly foreshortened figures. In 1674 Ferrari married Piola’s daughter, Margherita, consolidating the existing business collaboration between the families. The work undertaken by the Casa Piola did not change but, with Ferrari’s help, was considerably augmented. In the 1670s and 1680s the two artists collaborated on many fresco projects.

A new decorative richness is apparent in Domenico’s secular and sacred vault fresco, the Glory of S Gaetano (1674; Genoa, S Siro), and in his fresco Bacchus and Ariadne (1679; Genoa, Pal. Centurione; see Gavazza, Lamera and Magnani, 1990, fig.). This is also visible in his altarpiece of the Assumption (1676; Chiavari Cathedral) and his painting of the Annunciation for SS Annunziata in Genoa (1679). In 1684 Piola began to fresco the choir of S Leonardo and two rooms in the Villa Gropallo at Zerbino; all work was interrupted in this year after a French bombardment destroyed much of Genoa, including Domenico’s house and studio.

In 1684–5 Domenico made a trip with his family to Milan, Piacenza, Bologna and Asti. At Piacenza, perhaps assisted by his student Giovanni Battista Draghi (1657–1712) and by Giovanni Battista Merano, he painted decorations in the Casa Baldini (Gavazza, 1989, figs 281–5) and in S Maria in Torricella (frescoes destr.). At Asti, with his sons Antonio Maria and Paolo Gerolamo, he frescoed scenes from the Life of the Virgin (destr.) in the presbytery of the cathedral. In Genoa in 1688 he and Gregorio de’ Ferrari began to decorate rooms in the Palazzo Rosso on the theme of the four seasons, Piola executing Autumn and Winter and Ferrari the more lyrical Spring and Summer. Preparatory drawings for Winter survive (Genoa, Pal. Rosso; London, BM).

In the 1690s Piola painted two large decorative canvases, an Allegory of the Liberal Arts and the Family of Darius before Alexander (both Genoa, Pal. Bianco), for Niccolò Pallavicini. Piola’s most complete and complex fresco cycle (begun c. 1681) is in S Luca, Genoa, a small church belonging to the Spinola family. He was assisted by his brother, Giovanni Andrea, and his son, Paolo Gerolamo, who had studied in Rome (c. 1690–94). The cupola, walls and apse are covered with scenes and ornament. The architectural illusionism of the apse composition, St Luke Painting the Virgin, and of that in the cupola, Vision of Paradise with Coronation of the Virgin, and the subjects and figures in the pendentives ( Judith and Holofernes, Mocking of Job, Prodigal Son, Jael and Sisera), strongly suggest that the Casa Piola had absorbed the Roman manner. Piola’s Coronation of the Virgin with SS Joseph and Bernard (1698; Genoa, S Michele in Celle), with fewer and smaller figures, indicates a move towards the increasingly popular classical idiom. The complexity of his small-scale figured compositions can be seen in the oil sketches (Genoa, Pal. Bianco) that he entered for the competition (1700) to fresco the main reception room of the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa.

2. Prints.

Piola made a small number of prints and designed many frontispieces for books and thesis pages. His own prints were indebted to the style and imagery of etchings by Castiglione; his print of the Nativity (1656), his earliest dated work in this medium, is strikingly close to Castiglione. There also exists an etching (1665) by Piola of a catafalque for King Philip IV of Spain, which he had designed in collaboration with his cousin, Camogli. In 1667 he designed the frontispiece for Raffaele Soprani’s Scrittori di Genova (Genoa, 1667); in the 1670s he frequently collaborated with the French engravers Georges Tasnière (1632–1704) and Antonio DePienne ( fl 1672), who worked in Turin. An architectural drawing inscribed as made for a room in the Palazzo Reale, Turin, and dated 1675 (Turin, Archv Stato) may indicate his presence there. Two frontispieces engraved by Tasnière after designs by Piola date from 1670: Mercury Holding the Book for Fame, the frontispiece to Emanuele Tesauro’s Inscriptiones (Turin, 1670) and Poetry Assisted by Aristotle Looking at the Sun through a Telescope, the frontispiece to the same author’s Cannocchiale Aristotelico (Turin, 1670). The Allegory of the Arts, the frontispiece, engraved by Tasnière, to Soprani’s Vite de’ Pittori, scultori ed architetti Genovesi (Genoa, 1674), is stylistically similar. Maria of Savoy Surrounded by Virtues, a thesis page with the Vitale arms, and Theology and Philosophy before Justice and Peace, a thesis page with the Frichignono arms, engraved by DePienne in 1675, display a new decorative richness (examples, Turin, Bib. Reale). His association with Tasnière continued into the 1690s, when among works engraved by the latter after Piola’s designs were a portrait of Geronima Durazza (1691) and a thesis page SS Solutore, Avventore and Ottavio (1693).

Fausta Franchini Guelfi. "Piola." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067779pg1 (accessed April 11, 2012).

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