CASOLANI, ALESSANDRO. — Painter, born in Siena, to Agostino, in 1552, died there on 20 January 1606. After a stay in Rome, he returned to Siena and began an intensely active career that made him one of the most highly esteemed masters of his time.
Among the most important works of this period are a Nativity in the church of the Servi; the large canvas depicting S. Caterina working for the Pope’s return from Avignon, for the « Oratorio della Cucina » in the saint’s house at Fontebranda, where echoes of the painting of Girolamo Muziano can also be discerned; the restoration of the fresco on the antiport of Camollia (1587), now almost completely destroyed; and several frescoes with allegorical figures in the Torre del Mangia, from which C. derived the nickname « Alessandro dalla Torre ». A Conception in the Capuchin church would indicate, according to the ancient historiographers, the transition to a second, more forthright and lively manner, documented by various paintings in churches in the territory of Casole d'Elsa and by the canvas depicting the Nativity in Siena Cathedral (1594). A Resurrection that was in S. Francesco and was highly praised by Guido Reni was destroyed in a fire. The Carthusian Order, for which C. had frescoed the Last Supper in the refectory of the charterhouse of Pontignano near Siena, secured him an invitation to go to the charterhouse of Pavia, where, together with Pietro Sorri, he frescoed three sections of the cupola with Apocalyptic Scenes and executed other works. On his return to Siena, he painted many pictures for churches in Fermo, Naples, Genoa, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. The best-known and most valuable composition of his final period is the Martyrdom of s. Bartolomeo (signed and dated 1604), still in existence in the Carmine church of Siena. Once a highly celebrated painter, he now appears to us as a noble and prolific Mannerist, greatly influenced by Barocci, like almost all his Sienese contemporaries, and rather inclined to change his manner. His son ILARIO completed several pictures left unfinished by his father and was active, besides Siena, in Rome, where he decorated the church of S. Maria dei Monti: he was considerably inferior to Alessandro and died around 1630.