CARLONE (CARLONI). – Lombard family of architects, sculptors, painters, and decorators, active from the 15th to the 19th century in northern Italy, between Milan and Genoa, and in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The most notable members of the family are ANDREA or Giovanni Andrea, a painter, born in Genoa in 1639 and died there in 1697, who, a pupil of C. Maratta in Rome, worked in Perugia and then in Rome itself, where there is an affresco by him in the church of the Gesù, 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 considered to be a Magdalene, now in the Uffizi.
CARLO ANTONIO, born at Scaria and died at Passau in 1708, worked chiefly 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 the one dedicated to ss. Peter and Paul, and carried out work in the other, belonging to the Augustinians.
CARLO INNOCENZO, a painter, was perhaps the most notable artist of the family. Born at Scaria in 1686 and died 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 Einsiedeln. But his principal works are in Germany, where he had joined his father Giovan Battista – a painter of some merit, active chiefly in Genoa – and where he worked for the duke of Württemberg, the electors of Cologne and Trier, the prince-elector of Bavaria, etc. His activity was particularly noteworthy in the Residenz of Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart, where he executed frescoes, paintings, and altarpieces.
Other works of his, all executed in a free manner but not without decorative merit, are in the Elector’s palace at Brühl, in the castle at Heimsheim, in the palaces of the Residenz at Passau and Stuttgart, and in Vienna, in the churches and at the Belvedere. Among the other members of the family may be mentioned the architect GIOVANNI BATTISTA, brother of Carlo Antonio, likewise active at Passau and Waldsassen; the decorators, chiefly 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 decorated the church of the Soccorso at Vilshofen in 1693.