Valerio Castello
Born Genoa, 22 Dec 1624; died Genoa, 17 Feb 1659.
Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Bernardo Castello. He was one of the leading Ligurian painters of the 17th century, whose art developed from a continuous and passionate study of a wide range of sources. His paintings of mythological and religious subjects unite an elegant figure style with an interest in dramatic and violent compositions; his touch is spontaneous and his palette vibrant with reds and pinks, blues and yellows. His brilliant decorative frescoes introduced the splendour of the High Baroque to Genoese painters. He was well known for his rapid oil sketches, with light and lively brushwork, which anticipate aspects of the Rococo. Few of his paintings are dated or datable, and his stylistic development remains highly controversial.
1. Life and work.
(i) Training and early years, before c. 1646.
Bernardo Castello died when Valerio was five. The family originally intended that he should study literature, but soon Valerio chose to pursue a stronger vocation for painting. Early sources tell how he taught himself by copying drawings by his father. With other young Genoese artists he studied Perino del Vaga’s mythological frescoes in the Palazzo Doria at Fassolo (1530s), which had also been one of the models for his father’s art. Castello responded to a rich variety of artistic styles, to Tuscan and Roman Mannerism, represented in Genoa by Perino and Domenico Beccafumi, and, later, to Pietro Sorri (c. 1556–1621 or 1622) and Benedetto Brandimarte (fl 1588–92), and to the Genoese works of Federico Barocci, Giulio Cesare Procaccini and Anthony van Dyck.
For a thorough technical training, he entered the workshops of first Domenico Fiasella and then Giovanni Andrea de’ Ferrari. He was a precocious pupil and felt confined by his teachers’ interest in naturalism and narrative. To seek new inspiration, he travelled to Milan and then to Parma, probably between 1640 and 1645. In Milan he deepened his knowledge of Procaccini in particular, but he also became familiar with the works of many other Milanese artists, from Giovanni Battista Crespi to Francesco Cairo. In Parma he studied the paintings of Correggio and Parmigianino.
This intense study of earlier masters and the brilliantly original synthesis of ideas derived from them underlay Castello’s early training and his later development. A group of pictures that probably dates from this early period reveals this synthesis of ideas with particular clarity. The Holy Family (Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.) is closely linked to Perino del Vaga yet also suggests the influence of Beccafumi. In other works, such as the dramatically lit Beheading of St John the Baptist (Milan, Castello Sforzesco) or the large Death of Lucretia (Asti, Pin. Civ.), which echoes works by Francesco Cairo, Castello drew closer to the figure style of Lombard painters.
His interest in the refined elegance of Parmigianino is evident in the Virgin and Child with St Eufemia (ex-Pagano priv. col., Genoa, see Gavazza, fig.). This picture is so close to Parmigianino’s style, especially in the details of the iconography, that it may be a copy of a lost original. The Madonna with Cherries (Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.) brilliantly draws together such varied sources into a new and vividly personal style. The composition suggests Procaccini, while the figures and colours are indebted to Parmigianino, Correggio and van Dyck. Castello studied the many paintings that van Dyck had produced in Genoa, not only for their iconography and compositions, but also for their handling of colour. The warmth and brilliance of his glowing reds and blues are strikingly close to those of van Dyck.
Early sources suggest that Valerio’s first fresco was the lost decoration for the façade of a palazzo in Piazza S Donato, Genoa, which showed St Bernard Contemplating the Virgin and Child. The frescoes of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Genoa, Pal. Parodi, Chapel), which retain a slightly archaic symmetry, and the stylistically similar fresco of the Virgin and Child between SS Dominic and Clare (Genoa, S Martino d’Albaro, Castello Chapel) probably date from shortly before the middle of the century.
(ii) Mature period, c. 1646–59.
(a) Easel paintings.
Two canvases for the oratory of S Giacomo della Marina, Genoa, the Calling of St James and the Baptism of St James by St Peter, have been dated to 1646–7. Although they were probably painted around the same time, these two works are stylistically different: whereas the Calling of St James seems to have been planned with great freedom and its colours are light and clear, the Baptism is more firmly structured and its contrasts of tone are more dramatic. For the Baptism, a work rich in elements derived from Procaccini, Veronese and Rubens, there is a splendid surviving modello (Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.), which was probably a preliminary sample for the approval of the patron; this small painting is full of intense chromatic refinements. Like Valerio Castello’s other numerous and often excellent sketches, it seems to be realized with very light, rapid and energetic brushstrokes that define the figures with great economy, picking them out with deft touches of brilliant light.
There are only two dated works from the later part of Castello’s career: the altarpiece with SS Sebastian, Lawrence and Roche (1648; S Siro, S Margherita Ligure) and the altarpiece with SS Mark the Evangelist, John the Baptist, Cecilia, George and Lawrence (1655; Recco, Parish Church). The lack of further dated works makes attributions and the establishing of a firm chronology in the last decade of Valerio’s career difficult. Labò (1942), probably on the basis of his discovery of a document recording commission or payment, assigned a date of 1655 to the painting of the Virgin and Child with SS John the Baptist and George (Genoa, Gal. Pal. Bianco). Rubens, whose influence is already apparent in the Baptism of St James by St Peter, was increasingly important for the development of Castello’s mature art. He learnt from Rubens the creative possibilities of a sense of unlimited space and of a new kind of narrative, celebratory and exalted, which transcends traditional schemes (Gavazza). In works that seem more mature, the influence of Rubens is suggested by a new emphasis on dramatic gesture and powerful rhythmic movement. This is particularly apparent in several versions of the Massacre of the Innocents (two good versions, Vienna, Ksthist. Mus., and Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.) and in the Rape of the Sabines (Florence, Uffizi; Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.), in which Valerio created more panoramic compositions, with violent dramatic effects.
Castello’s interest in Baroque approaches to spatial problems was also stimulated by the paintings of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Valerio’s Adoration of the Magi (Genoa, priv. col., see Manzitti, fig.) is close to Castiglione in the numerous animals and in the festive crowds of figures before stately Classical ruins, set in a landscape that falls steeply away in the distance. His Adoration of the Shepherds (ex-S Stefano, Genoa; on dep. Genoa, Depositi Sopr., see Manzitti, fig.) is strikingly close to Castiglione’s Adoration of the Shepherds (Genoa, S Luca).
(b) Fresco cycles.
In his last decade Castello reached a level of excellence in fresco as well as easel painting. He was the first fresco painter in Genoa to move from the laudatory narrative frescoes of the late 16th century to the splendour of High Baroque allegory, a style that prevailed in the later 17th century. This transformation is already accomplished in the frescoes of the palazzo belonging to Giovan Battista Balbi (formerly Palazzo Reale), where the artist painted Fame (c. 1656). There, above a quadratura setting framing allegorical figures, the figure of Fame, with swirling draperies, soars against airy skies. This is a strikingly free and graceful composition that looks forward to the Rococo. Yet Castello’s outstanding achievement as a fresco painter is the decoration of some rooms in the Palazzo Balbi–Senarega (c. 1657–9), which belonged to Francesco Maria Balbi. There he decorated a gallery and two reception rooms with mythological scenes, and the principal salone with an Allegory of Time. This richly crowded and ebullient fresco, boldly illusionistic and built on sweeping diagonals, glows with brilliant colour; it shows Time, who, in a golden chariot, crushes beneath his wheels symbols of human power and achievement. In this fresco, executed in collaboration with the Emilian quadratura painter Andrea Seghizzi (d 1684), Castello’s study of Rubens seems fully assimilated. It is evident in the borrowing of iconographic models and, in particular, in the decidedly scenographic composition. The monumental treatment is also reminiscent of Roman Baroque culture and especially of the works of Pietro da Cortona. Some figures in lunettes, inserted in older decoration in a small room in the Palazzo Doria Spinola, have also been attributed to Castello; their dating is problematic.
Castello’s frescoed Annunciation on the vault of S Marta, Genoa, and the large frescoes in the nave of the church of S Maria in Passione, depicting Christ Presented to the People and Christ Carrying the Cross (both destr.; the latter known from a photograph), date from the last decade of his career. Castello’s drawings are rare, yet some survive for these late frescoes. The sketch for the Annunciation (Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), in pen and brown ink, with touches of light brown wash, over red chalk, and two squared modelli (London, BM) for the frescoes in S Maria in Passione are characterized by the brilliant freedom of his line.
2. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
In 1657, during the plague, the artist married and made his will. He died suddenly two years later at the height of his career, leaving a thriving workshop in which Bartolommeo Biscaino, Giovanni Battista Merano, Stefano Magnasco and Giovanni Paolo Cervetto (d 1657) worked as assistants.
Castello apparently worked with great intensity and was greatly appreciated by his contemporaries—so much so that Soprani, in 1674, wrote that ‘from foreign countries, including all of France, orders for his pictures came to Genoa, and this raised their prices too high for words’. A direct consequence of this success, however, was an early and widespread dispersion of his works; this partly accounts for the tardiness with which critics have re-evaluated the artist and recognized his international importance. Numerous studies, especially in the last few decades, have considerably enriched the catalogue of Valerio Castello’s works; he has also been the subject of a much discussed biography (Manzitti, 1972).
Maria Clelia Galassi and Federica Lamera. "Castello (ii)." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T014699pg2 (accessed April 10, 2012).
