Giovanni Battista Carlone Genoa 1603 - 1684

Giovanni Battista Carlone came from a family of painters: his brother, Giovanni, ran a workshop in Genoa which Giovanni Battista took over upon his brother's death in 1630, and Giovanni Battista had a son, Giovanni Andrea (1639-97) who also became a painter. Giovanni Battista was principally active in Genoa and throughout the 1640s, '50s and '60s, and was a prolific fresco-painter. His frescoes illustrating episodes from the Aeneid in the Palazzo Airoli-Negrone, Genoa, are characteristic of his colourful baroque style (see P. Pagano & M.C. Galassi, La pittura del '600 a Genova, Milan 1988, figs. 168-70).

Though appearing like a "finished" work this canvas was produced as a bozzetto for the fresco decoration in the ducal chapel of the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, which was frescoed by Carlone in 1655 (reproduced in E. Gavazza, Lo avvio della pittura barocca. La grande decorazione a Genova, Genoa 1974, figs. 288-90). We know of other similar canvases which served as models for Carlone's frescoes: they too are worked up to this degree of finish and are of comparable dimensions (that is, between 120 and 150 cm. high; see A. Dagnino, in Genova nell' Età Barocca, exh. cat., Genoa, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, 2 May-26 July 1992, pp. 120-123, cat. nos. 28-32, all reproduced in colour). The four saints represented here - George, John the Baptist, Bernardino and Lawrence - were named patron saints of Genoa after 1637, the year in which the Virgin was proclaimed protector of the city. Though the iconography of the Virgin is different, the four saints appear again in Carlone's painting in the Banca Carige collection, Genoa, executed in preparation for the now-destroyed façade of the Albergo dei Poveri (144 by 116 cm.; Dagnino, op. cit., pp. 123-4, cat. no. 33, reproduced). In this painting, like in other bozzetti produced by Carlone, the viewpoint is taken slightly from below and the putti and music-making angels have much in common with those, for example, in Carlone's Glory of San Siro (Dagnino, op. cit., cat. no. 32, reproduced p. 123).

We are grateful to Dr. Mary Newcome Schleier for endorsing the attribution to Carlone and for identifying that this is the bozzetto for the fresco in Palazzo Ducale.