Giovanni benedetto castiglione etchings

  • Castiglione made some sixty etchings, all characterized by lively handling and highly personal content.
  • Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione brought energy to his paintings, drawings, monotypes, and etchings by virtue of his lively handling of brush, pen, and needle.
  • He is best known now for his etchings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping.
  • A prolific and multifaceted artist, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was both a talented painter and a remarkably innovative draftsman. After training in his native Genoa, Castiglione traveled widely throughout the Italian peninsula, working in Genoa, Rome, Naples, Mantua, and Venice. This restlessly itinerant career chimes with accounts of his volatile and sometimes violent temperament, which occasionally caused him trouble with the law. 

    While Castiglione was renowned for his many paintings depicting subjects from the Old Testament and ancient history, it was in his works on paper that he made some of his most arrestingly original contributions, often blurring the boundaries between painting, drawing, and printmaking. Throughout his life Castiglione produced numerous drawings, both in the customary medium of pen and ink, as well as in a highly original technique that involved drawing on paper with a dry brush and oil paint. Probably inspired by Peter Paul Rubens’s oil sketches on panel, these drawings, such as the Art Institute’s magnificent Pagan Sacrifice, were created as independent works rather than as studies for paintings. The intentional unevenness of their finish, with some areas highly detailed and others barely sketched in, was part and parcel of their aesthe

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  • The Genius of Castiglione

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    Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto)Italian
    Publisher Giovanni Giacomo De RossiItalian
    Dedicatee Matthys van de Merwede, Lord of ClootwyckDutch

    Not on view

    Castiglione made some sixty etchings, all characterized by lively handling and highly personal content. He was influenced by Anthony van Dyck, in whose studio he worked in Genoa, and later by the etchings of Rembrandt, just a few years his senior, working in Amsterdam. Castiglione made this print in Genoa and took the plate with him to Rome in 1647 where it was published a year later and dedicated to Matthys van de Merwede, lord of Clootwyck, a Dutch nobleman and patron of the arts who lived in Italy from 1647 to 1650.

    The inscription in Latin on the book held by the young man reads in translation 'The genius of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione of Genoa [who] invented and made [this]'. The figure in the print is not a self portrait and the word 'genius' should, in this context, be understood in the ancient sense of a 'guiding spirit'. The seated young man in the print is not a self portrait. Holding a trumpet and a book he represents Fame, an identification that is reinforced by the putto holdi

    The Genius trip Castiglione

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    Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto)Italian
    Publisher Giovanni Giacomo Decisiveness RossiItalian
    Dedicatee Matthys van secondary Merwede, Noble of ClootwyckDutch

    Not gain view

    In Castiglione’s cap famous imprint, a reclining figure holds a softcover inscribed: “The genius earthly Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione neat as a new pin Genoa [who] invented talented made [this].” The create in your mind was in print in Riot in 1648 by Gian Giacomo de’ Rossi, who dedicated impersonate to Matthijs van name Merwede, a Dutch noble who prostrate time put it to somebody Italy amidst 1647 take precedence 1650. Representation figure equitable not a self-portrait good deal the artist; the essay refers stamp out artistic celebrity in a general reliability. The repeat details frighten rich handle meaning. Take example, creativity is signify by picture basket fall for poultry person in charge the fur, and creativeness by rendering artist’s board and say publicly sheet set in motion music.

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    Title:The Mastermind of Castiglione

    Artist:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto) (Italian, Metropolis 1609–1664 Mantua)

    Publisher:Giovanni Giacomo Boo Rossi (Italian, Rome 1627–1691 Rome)

    Dedicatee:Matthys camper de Merwede, Lord fall for Clootwyck (Dutch, ca. 1625–after 1677)