Lot 1131 Dα

Giovanni Battista Castello was born in Genoa, the elder brother of the artist Bernardo Castello (1557-1629). He is nicknamed 'il Genovese' to distinguish him from Giovanni Battista Castello, il Bergamasco (c.1509-c.1569). Giovanni Battista studied with Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), the leading artist in late sixteenth-century Genoa, and soon established a reputation as one of the foremost miniaturists of his day. He made a particular speciality of detailed scenes on parchment or vellum. His fame spread as far as Spain, where he was engaged by Emperor Philip II on the illumination of the Royal choir books in the Escorial in 1584.
The last years of the sixteenth and the first two decades of the seventeenth century saw Castello at the peak of his activity, producing the small, highly finished religious subjects praised for their 'coloriti con esquisitezza meravigliosa' by Raffaello Soprani in his "Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, et Architetti Genovesi" of 1674.