Luca Cambiasi

Luca Cambiasi (surname also written Cambiaso or Cangiagio; 18 November 1527 – 6 September 1585) was an Italian painter and draftsman, familiarly known as Lucchetto da Genova. Cambiasi was born at Moneglia, then part of the Republic of Genoa, 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 Giovanni Battista Castello. His Resurrection and Transfiguration altarpieces for San Bartolomeo 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 (formerly 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 thirties began to decline in skill, 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 Encyclopædia 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 Bernardo Castello, Giovanni Battista Paggi, Francesco Spezzini,and Lazzaro Tavaro