CASTELLO, BERNARDO. - Painter, born in Genoa in 1557, died there on 4 Oct. 1629. He was a pupil of Andrea Semino; but, drawn to the art of Luca Cambiaso, he soon adopted his manner. Still young, he went to Ferrara and befriended Torquato Tasso, illustrating the *Gerusalemme liberata* for him in 1586.
He then returned to Genoa, where he pursued his eclectic painting activity, aligned with various currents of Mannerism, executing, among other works, altarpieces for the churches of S. Francesco, S. Siro, and S. Maria di Castello, and frescoes for Genoese palaces and villas. In 1604 he was in Rome; and later, for a brief time, in Turin. He maintained friendships with poets and men of letters, especially with Chiabrera, to whom he owed much of his fame, perhaps exceeding his true merits.
His brother, Giov. Battista (1547-1637), was a noted painter and miniaturist, a disciple of Cambiaso.
Far superior to his father Bernardo was Valerio, born in Genoa in 1624, died there on 17 Oct. 1659: a pupil of Fiasella and G. A. De Ferrari, he trained in Milan on the works of the Procaccini (also active in Genoa) and later in Parma in contact with the art of Correggio. His particular sensitivity to color suggests that he looked to Venetian painting, perhaps through the mediation of Rubens and van Dyck.
Castello’s art is among the most spontaneous and personal of Genoese Seicento painting: refined and lively in color, he felt, and in a very elevated way, the value of vibrant and almost inhuman line.
In frescoes more than in canvases, this pictorial dynamism—rich in chromatic preciosity and full of refined elegance—fully comes to life and reveals the height of his creative qualities, which seem truly to anticipate the painting of the eighteenth century. In his sketches, he sometimes seems to anticipate the art of Alessandro Magnasco.
Among his most significant works are *The Danaids* (A. Doria Gallery, Genoa); *The Betrothal of the Virgin* (Spinola Gallery, Genoa); *The Virgin of the Veil* (Museum of the Civic Hospitals, Genoa); the sketch for *The Rape of the Sabine Women* (De Ferrari Collection, Genoa); and, among the frescoes, those adorning the hall of the Palazzo Balbi, also in Genoa.