Giulio Campi

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Giulio Campi (1500 - 1572) was an Italian painter and architect. His brothers Vicenzo Campi and Antonio Campi were also renowned painters.

[edit] Biography

The eldest of a family prominent painters, Campi was born at Cremona. His father Galeazzo (1475-1536) taught him the first lessons in art.

In 1522, in Mantua, he studied painting, architecture, and modelling under Giulio Romano. He visited Rome, became an ardent student of the antique, and like Bernardino — distantly related to him — he combined a Lombard and Roman traditions. He collaborated on some works with Camillo Boccaccino, the son of Boccaccio Boccaccino, with whom Campi may also have received training.

Campi is called the "Ludovico Carracci of Cremona" although he preceded the founder of the Eclectics. When but twenty-seven Giulio executed for the church of Sant' Abbondio his masterpiece, a Virgin and Child with SS. Celsus and Nazarus, a decoration masterly in the freedom of its drawing and in the splendour of its colour. His numerous paintings are grandly and reverently conceived, freely drawn, vigorously coloured, lofty in style, and broadly handled. He was animated in all his work by a deep piety. The churches of Cremona, Mantua, and Milan are filled with his frescoes; and Saint Margaret's, in his native town, is a Giulio Campi gallery. Among his chief works are the Descent from the Cross (S. Sigismondo) at Cremona, and the frescoes in the dome of S. Girolamo at Mantua. An alter-piece in S. Sigismondo and his Labours of Hercules were engraved by the celebrated Ghiso, il Mantovano.

He died in Cremona in 1572.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

• Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, 583-586.