Luca Cambiasi (1527-1585)
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Luca Cambiasi (surname also written Cambiaso or Cangiagio) was an Italian painter, familiarly known as Lucchetto da Genova. Cambiasi was born at Moneglia, a town in the Genoese state, the son of a painter named Giovanni Cambiasi.
Cambiasi was precocious, and at the age of fifteen he painted, along with his father, some subjects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the facade of a house in Genoa. In 1544, at the age of seventeen, he was involved in the decoration of the Palazzo Doria, now the Prefettura, perhaps working with Marcantonio Calvi, a painter of his father’s generation. He aided in the vault decoration of the church of San Matteo, in collaboration with Giambattista Castello. His Resurrection and Transfiguration altarpieces for San Bartolommeo degli Armeni date from c. 1560. In 1563, he painted a Resurrection for San Giovanni Battista in Montalto Ligure.
This was followed by frescoes for the Villa Imperiale at Genoa-Turalba (also called the Palazzo Imperiali Terralba) with a Rape of the Sabines (c. 1565) and the Palazzo Meridiana (foremerly Grimaldi) (also in 1565). In the Capella Lercari of the Duomo di San Lorenzo, Cambiasi frescoed a Presentation and Marriage of the Virgin in 1569, remainder of chapel by Castello.
The 1911 Britannica states that Cambiasi by his 30s began to decline in power, though not at once in reputation, owing to the vexations brought upon him by a passion which he conceived for his sister-in-law. His wife having died, and the sister-in-law had taken charge of his house and children, he failed to procure a papal dispensation for marrying her.
In 1583 he accepted an invitation from Philip II to complete for the Escorial a series of frescoes begun by Castello; and the 1911 encyclopedia states the principal reason for traveling to Spain was that he hoped royal influence would gain favor with the Vatican for his marriage plans, but this failed. In the Escorial he executed a Paradise on the vaulting of the church, with a multitude of figures. For this picture he received 2,000 ducats, probably the largest sum that had, up to that time, ever been given for a single work. His paintings in Spain, hew to strict religious thematic.
His son Orazio Cambiasi became a painter. Other followers from Genoa, include Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo, Simone Barabino, Giulio Benso, Battista and his brother Bernardo Castello, Giovanni Battista Paggi, Francesco Spezzini, and Lazzaro Tavarone.
Cambiasi had an ardent fancy, and was a bold designer in a Raphaelesque mode. His main influences are said to have been Correggio and the Late Renaissance Venetian school. The artist painted sometimes with a brush in each hand, and with a certainty equalling or transcending that even of Tintoretto.
Cambiasi is best represented in Genoa. In the church of San Giorgio is a canvas of the Martyrdom of San Giorgio; in Santa Maria da Carignano, there is a “Pietà,” containing his own portrait and (according to tradition) that of his beloved sister-in-law. Cambiasi is also known for having painted notable nocturnes, including an Adoration of the Shepherds (1570) and the so called Madonna of the Candle (1575). The former painting appears inspired by Corregio’s Nativity.
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