Luca Cambiasi

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Luca Cambiasi (surname also written Cambiaso or Cangiagio; 1527–1585) was an Italian painter, familiarly known as Lucchetto da Genova.

Vanity of Earthly Love, by Luca Cambiasi, circa 1570

[edit] Biography

Cambiasi was born at Moneglia, a town in the Genoese state, the son of a painter named Giovanni Cambiasi.

He took to drawing at a very early age, imitating his father, and developed great aptitude for foreshortening. At the age of fifteen he painted, along with his father, some subjects from Ovid's Metamorphoses on the front of a house in Genoa, and afterwards, in conjunction with Marcantonio Calvi, a ceiling showing great daring of execution in the Palazzo Doria.

He also formed an early friendship with Giambattista Castello; both artists painted together, with so much similarity of style that their works could hardly be told apart; from this friend Cambiasi learned much in the way of perspective and architecture. Cambiasi's masterpieces date to one or two decades after his youthful independent canvases; from that time he declined in power, though not at once in reputation, owing to the agitations and vexations brought upon him by a passion which he conceived for his sister-in-law.

His wife having died, and the sister-in-law having 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 continue in the Escorial a series of frescoes which had been begun by Castello, now deceased; and it is said that one principal reason for his closing with this offer was that he hoped to bring the royal influence to bear upon the pope, but in this again he failed. Worn out with his disquietudes, he died in the Escorial in 1585.

Cambiasi had an ardent fancy, and was a bold designer in a Raphaelesque mode. His main influences are said to have been Antonio da Corregio and the Late Renaissance Venetian school. His extreme facility astonished the Spanish painters; and it is said that Philip II, watching one day with pleasure the off-hand zest with which Cambiasi was painting a head of a laughing child, was allowed the further surprise of seeing the laugh changed, by a touch or two upon the lips, into a weeping expression. The artist painted sometimes with a brush in each hand, and with a certainty equalling or transcending that even of Tintoretto.

He made a vast number of drawings, and was also something of a sculptor, executing in this branch of art a figure of Faith. Altogether he ranks as one of the ablest artists of his day. In personal character, notwithstanding his executive energy, he is reported to have been timid and diffident. His son Orazio Cambiasi became likewise a painter. Other followers from Genoa, include Lazzaro Tavarone, Battista and his brother Bernardo Castello, Giovanni Battista Paggi, Giulio Benso, Simone Barabino, and Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo.

The best works of Cambiasi are to be seen in Genoa. In the church of S. Giorgio--the martyrdom of that saint; in the Palazzo Imperiali Terralba, a Genoese suburba fresco of the "Rape of the Sabines"; in S. Maria da Carignanoa "Pietà," containing his own portrait and (according to tradition) that of his beloved sister-in-law. In the Escorial he executed several pictures; one is 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.

Cambiasi is also known for having painted a few 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.