CARLONE (CARLONI). - A Lombard family of architects, sculptors, painters, and decorators, active from the 15th to the 19th century in northern Italy, between Milan and Genoa, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The most notable personalities of the family are an ANDREA, or Giovanni Andrea, a painter, b. in Genoa in 1639, d. there in 1697, who, a pupil in Rome of C. Maratta, worked in Perugia and then in Rome itself, where there is by him, in the church of the Gesù, a fresco with the Glory of St. Francis Xavier. In Genoa he painted an Allegory of Human Life in the Palazzo Rosso. His most notable work, however, is identified as a Magdalene now in the Uffizi.
CARLO ANTONIO, b. at Scaria, d. at Passau in 1708, worked above all in Austria, at Admont, Garsten, and St. Florian, and then in Germany, where he worked at the Benedictine abbey of Niederaltaich and at Passau, where he built the Jesuit church and that dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul and did work in the other one, of the Augustinians.
CARLO INNOCENZO, a painter, was perhaps the most notable artist of the family. B. at Scaria in 1686, d. in Vienna in 1775, a pupil in Venice of Paolo Quaglia and in Rome of Trevisani, he soon crossed the Alps to work in the cathedral of Ljubljana and then in Switzerland and at Einsiedeln. But his principal works are in Germany, where he had joined his father Giovan Battista — a painter of some merit, active above all in Genoa — and where he worked for the Duke of Württemberg, for the Electors of Cologne and Trier, for the Elector Prince of Bavaria, etc. His activity was notable above all in the Residence of Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart, where he executed frescoes, paintings, and altarpieces.
Other works of his, all carried out with a free and easy manner but not without decorative value, are in the Elector's palace at Brühl, in the castle at Heimsheim, in the palaces of the Residence of Passau and Stuttgart, and in Vienna in the churches and in the Belvedere. Among the other members of the family may be remembered the architect GIOVANNI BATTISTA, brother of Carlo Antonio, likewise active at Passau and at Waldsassen; the decorative artists, especially stucco-workers, CARLO ANTONIO (18th century), DIEGO FRANCESCO (1674-1750), DOMENICO ANTONIO (18th century), GIOVAN BATTISTA (17th-18th centuries), GIOACCHINO (18th century), PIETRO FRANCESCO, an architect in Austria (17th century), SEBASTIANO and SILVESTRO, architects (16th and 17th centuries), all active in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; and finally GIOVANNI CARLO, a painter, who in 1693 decorated the church of the Soccorso at Vilshofen.