Valerio Castello was among the most gifted Genoese artists of the Seicento, despite having a brief career that lasted only about twenty years. The youngest son of the painter Bernardo Castello and nephew of the miniaturist Giovanni Battista Castello, he received his training in the studio of Domenico Fiasella. Between 1640 and 1645 he worked in Milan, and also spent some months in Parma, where the paintings of Parmigianino and Correggio had a profound effect on his style. One of his earliest works in Genoa was the high altar for the Oratory of San Giacomo della Marina, painted around 1646-1647, which shows the influence of the grand Baroque manner of Rubens and Van Dyck. During the 1650’s Castello was at the peak of his activity in Genoa, often working in collaboration with Domenico Piola. He painted decorative fresco cycles for the Palazzo Reale, the Palazzo Cattaneo-Adorno and the Palazzo Balbi-Senarega, and executed paintings in the churches of Santa Maria in Passione, Santa Marta and San Martino, among others. The breadth of Castello’s activity as a frescante suggests that he must have had a large workshop, although only a few pupils are known, notably Bartolomeo Biscaino. His paintings, characterized by passages of vibrant colour and a richness of textures and forms, had a profound influence on the succeeding generation of Genoese artists.
Drawings by Valerio Castello are significantly rarer than his paintings. Although he must have been a fairly prolific draughtsman, relatively few of his drawings survive, and of these only a handful are studies for known works. His draughtsmanship is characterized by a spirited, if sketchy penwork, often combined with red chalk and broad areas of tonal washes to create contrasts of light and dark. Able to capture movement with a few short, nervous strokes of the pen, Castello gave his drawn compositions a rhythmic quality that, combined with the freedom characteristic of his energetic draughtsmanship, adds greatly to their appeal.
Mary Newcome Schleier has kindly confirmed the attribution of this drawing, and has further pointed out that another autograph version of the composition, of approximately the same dimensions but without wash, is in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (1). Both drawings appear be studies for a lost painting, although certain details – notably the pose of the man at the lower right - are also found in Castello’s two known painted versions of The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, both in Genoa; a canvas in the Palazzo Bianco and a fresco formerly in the church of Sant’Agostino and now in the Palazzo Branca Doria (2).
The present sheet may be compared stylistically with such drawings by Valerio Castello as a study of The Finding of Moses in the Louvre (3). The squaring of the composition, with double lines of red chalk, is a distinctive feature of some of the artist’s preparatory compositional drawings, such as a lunette study in the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf (4).
Notes
1. Newcome Schleier, op.cit., pp.89-90, no.51 (as Castello); Manzitti, op.cit., p.246, under no.D11 (as a copy after the present sheet). The drawing bears an old attribution to the Sienese artist Domenico Beccafumi, and measures 217 x 211 mm.
2. Camillo Manzitti, Valerio Castello, Genoa, 1972, pp.114-115, no.37 (where dated to c.1649) and pp.128-129, no.50, respectively; Camillo Manzitti, Valerio Castello, Turin, 2004, pp.118-119, no.75, pl.8 and pp.122-123, no.83B, respectively. The Palazzo Bianco painting is illustrated in colour in Roberto Contini, ed., Pracht und Pathos: Meisterwerke der Barockmalerei aus dem Palazzo Bianco in Genua, exhibition catalogue, Berlin, 2003-2004, pp.156-157, no.48.
3. Mary Newcome-Schleier, Le dessin à Gênes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1985, pp.69-70, no.56.
4. Mary Newcome, Genoese Baroque Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Binghampton and Worcester, 1972, no.67; Mary Newcome, ‘The Drawings of Valerio Castello’, Master Drawings, 1975, No.1, p.35, no.4, pl.9.
