Antonio Maria Vassallo - Childhood of King Cyrus - WGA24325

Antonio Maria Vassallo (c. 1620-1664/1673) was an Italian painter of the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

period, active mainly in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

, and painting mythologic scenes and

still lifes A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, boo ...

.Antonio Maria Vassallo – Biography
/ref> His biography is poorly documented, and mainly depends on the Genoese biographer Raffaele Soprani (1674) as a source. He initially apprenticed with Vincenzo Malò (c. 1605-c. 1650), a

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

artist who had studied with Teniers the Elder and

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

. Vassallo appears to have been influenced by his fellow Genoese

Sinibaldo Scorza Sinibaldo Scorza (16 July 1589 – 5 April 1631) was an Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was born into a wealthy aristocratic family from Voltaggio (now part of Piedmont), his father being the Conte Scorza di Voltaggio, and he receive ...

and

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (baptized 23 March 16095 May 1664) was an Italian Baroque painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his etchings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotypi ...

. He painted a ''St. Francis with Three female saints'' (1648) for the church of San Gerolamo in Quarto. Vassallo also painted a ''Martyrdom of Saint

Marcello Mastrilli Marcello Francesco Mastrilli (1603 – October 17, 1637) was an Italian Jesuit missionary who was martyred in Japan on Mount Unzen during the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had banned Christianity in 1614. After sailing for Japan out to find and possi ...

(1664) for the Convento di Carignano.''Martyrdom ...'' now in private collection. Vassallo also painted portraits, yet no portraits by Vassallo are known at present. The closest follower of Vassallo's still-life style is

Giovanni Agostino Cassana Abate, or Giovanni Agostino Cassana (c.1658 – 6 May 1720) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He was a son of Giovanni Francesco Cassana and an elder brother of Niccolò and Giovanni Battista.

External links

References

Artnet biography from Grove encyclopedia of Art
1620s births 1660s deaths 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Genoa Italian Baroque painters Italian still life painters {{Italy-painter-17thC-stub