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 extremely intense activity that made him one of the most esteemed masters of his time.
Among the most important works from this period are a Nativity in the church of the Servite Fathers, the large canvas with St Catherine interceding for the return of the Pope from Avignon for the Oratory of the Kitchen in the saint’s house at Fontebranda, where reflections of the painting of Girolamo Muziano can also be discerned, the restoration of the fresco on the Porta Camollia (1587), now almost destroyed, and some frescoes with allegorical figures in the Torre del Mangia, from which C. derived the nickname Alessandro della Torre. A Conception in the church of the Capuchins is said by ancient historians to indicate a transition to a second, more frank and lively manner, documented by various paintings in churches in the territory of Casole d’Elsa and in the canvas with the Nativity in the Siena Duomo (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 Certosa of Pontignano near Siena, secured him an invitation to go to the Certosa of Pavia, where, together with Pietro Sorri, he frescoed three segments of the dome with Apocalyptic Scenes and executed other works; many paintings, on his return to Siena, he painted for churches in Fermo, Naples, Genoa, Nuremberg and Augsburg. The best-known and most prized composition of his final period is the Martyrdom of St Bartholomew (signed and dated 1604), still extant in the church of the Carmine in Siena. A painter very famous in his day, today he appears to us as a noble and prolific mannerist largely influenced by Barocci, like almost all his Sienese contemporaries, and rather inclined to change his style. His son ILARIO completed various unfinished paintings by his father and was active, besides in Siena, in Rome, where he decorated the church of S. Maria dei Monti; he was much inferior to Alessandro and died around 1630.