- NameGiovanni Battista Carlone
- Activity/Titlepainter
- Sexmale
- Variant namesGiovanni Battista Carlone
- Nationality/DatesItalian, born 1603-02-16, dead 1684
- PlacesPlace of birth: Genova, Italien
Place of death: Genova, Italien
Biography(2) Giovanni Battista Carlone
(b Genoa, 16 Feb 1603; d Genoa, 1684).
Painter, brother of (1) Giovanni Carlone. He probably went to Rome with his brother and studied in Florence with Domenico Passignano on the way back to Genoa. The many frescoes datable to the 1620s suggest that the brothers probably worked as a team. Giovanni Battista’s independent activity is not documented before 1630–32, when he finished the frescoes begun by his brother in S Antonio Abate in Milan. His earliest dated work is a canvas of St James Opening the Door for King Ferdinand (1632; Genoa, oratory of S Giacomo della Marina), which shows figures with sharp facial features and twisting, tight drapery folds—a figure style indebted to Salvator Rosa and distinctly different from the slightly swollen faces and hands in the figures by Giovanni Carlone I.
The Carlone workshop was influenced by the Roman decorative fresco painting of Pietro da Cortona; indeed, commissions received by the Carlone family for frescoes at the Villa Vascella, Rome (with Cortona, Francesco Allegrini and Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, 1643; destr.), and at the Certosa di Pavia (1660) imply that they had numerous artistic contacts outside Genoa. Giovanni Battista was an extremely prolific artist. From the 1640s and 1650s his dated paintings include St James on the Way to Martyrdom Healing a Man (1646; Genoa, S Giacomo della Marina); the Birth, Baptism and Beheading of St John the Baptist (1644; Chiavari, S Giovanni Battista); and a fresco, perhaps with Giulio Benso, in the chapel of the Palazzo Ducale at Genoa (1655). His most accomplished works are the decoration of the nave, apse and dome of S Siro, Genoa (1652–70), and the frescoes of the Story of Aeneas in brilliant reds, greens and purples, reminiscent of the sumptuous decorations of Cortona in the Palazzo Airoli-Negrone, Genoa (see Pesenti, pls 190–93). In 1661 Giovanni Battista competed with Domenico Piola for the commission for the dome of S Siro and here he created an illusionist vision of Paradise that follows Correggio and Giovanni Lanfranco.
Giovanni Battista’s late work is contemporary with the High Baroque style of Domenico Piola’s workshop, the Casa Piola. Perhaps as early as 1661, stimulated by his contact with Piola and later by his friendship with the Baroque sculptor Pierre Puget (to whom he acted as an agent in 1671), he began to create figures that are more undulating. Late works include the Martyrdom of St Benigno (1672; Genoa, Albergo Poveri) and frescoes in Bosio Marlugo (1676) and in S Sebastiano, Genoa (c. 1680; destr.).
Carlone (i): (2) Giovanni Battista Carlone