CAMBIASO, LUCA. - Painter, b. at Moneglia on 18 Oct. 1527, he soon received his first lessons in Genoa from his father Giovanni, a good painter active in the first half of the sixteenth century. His formation was certainly aided by the study of Perin del Vaga's frescoes in the Doria palace and perhaps also those of Pordenone in the same palace, the latter long since lost. He later became acquainted with the Lombards and the Venetians; and he was a friend of Valerio Corte, a disciple of Titian, active in 1550 in Genoa; in 1575 he was in Rome.
In 1583 he went to Spain with his son Orazio and Lazzaro Tavarone, to paint at the Escorial; he died in Madrid in 1585.
A fresco painter of great fame, he worked intensively in the palaces and churches of Genoa. He also painted altarpieces and pictures on sacred and profane subjects, today in Genoa and also abroad, in museums and collections. Among the frescoes, mention is made of those of the Villa Imperiale and of the Grimaldi palace in Genoa; among the pictures, the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist in the church of S. Maria dalla Cella at Sampierdarena; the Pietà in S. Maria di Carignano in Genoa and the Sleeping Holy Child in the collection of the Ospedali civili of that city. C. must be considered the initiator of that Genoese school of painting which later asserted itself greatly in the seventeenth century. A remarkable artist, he, although eclectic, imparts great vitality to his images, always firmly drawn, lively and strong in color and of a refined and elegant decorative taste. In his pictures, even if sometimes labored, one always catches some happy moment when he succeeds in freeing himself from a certain inferior mannerism through the use of a loose, free brushstroke of great pictorial effectiveness. He influenced not only the Genoese fresco painters of his time, such as Tavarone, but above all, and even more, Ansaldo and the formation of Bernardo Strozzi himself.
Bibliography6 works
Pietro Zampetti