Luca Cambiaso

Italian, 1527–1585

BiographyThe son of a Genoese painter, Cambiaso absorbed developments in Roman High Renaissance and early Mannerist art from the Roman fresco painter Perino del Vaga (1500/1-1547) who was in Genoa in the 1520s, and from his own probable visit to the capital from 1547 to 1550. On Cambiaso's return to Genoa, he painted many fresco cycles in Genoese churches and palaces, as well as altarpieces and some sculpture, and became the most prominent artist in Genoa. His early hard-edged and mannered style was tempered by the influence of Correggio (ca. 1489-1534), Titian (ca. 1485-1576), and Veronese (ca. 1528-1588) during this period.

In the 1570s, Cambiaso executed fewer public commissions and more devotional works for private patrons, depicting evocative nocturnal religious scenes, and other subjects, presented in a simplified style. His interest in Counter-Reformation art may have been stimulated by Jesuit spiritual practices and a visit to Rome in 1582. In 1583 Philip II of Spain invited Cambiaso to Madrid, as a result of an altarpiece the artist had sent from Genoa to the Escorial, a monastery and royal residence, in 1581. In Spain he was mainly occupied with the decoration of the church of San Lorenzo in the Escorial. He died in Madrid two years later and was buried there.