(Genoa 1624–1659)
Adoration of the Shepherds,
oil on copper, 23.5 x 31 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna;
Private collection, Austria

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 60680) as Valerio Castello (mistakenly as on canvas).

We are grateful to Camillo Manzitti for confirming the attribution to Valerio Castello on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

Castello executed another version, also on copper and similar both in scale to the present work, in the Pallavicini collection, Rome, executed between 1653-1654; he also made another larger version, now in a private collection (see C. Manzitti, Valerio Castello, Genoa 1972, respectively p. 164, no. 87 e p. 166, no. 89). Castello also made another version of this subject in fresco, during the 1650s, for a small private oratory attached to the Villa Semino-Parodi-Sagredo in Genoa; removed from its original location during the 1960s and recently on the art market (Boetto, 11 June 2018, lot 85).

The present painting is of considerable quality and displays the great inventive, painterly skills of the artist. The composition is played out on a series of intersecting diagonals while the brushwork is free, swift and vibrant. The deployment of a brightly intense palette reveals the influence of Flemish painting, which was well represented in Genoa, and would have provided Castello with the models he was inspired by and studied: above all the work of van Dyck. Following his initial training in the studio of Domenico Fiasella, and then Giovanni Andrea de’ Ferrari, Castello travelled to Milan where he was influenced by the work of Giulio Cesare Procaccini, subsequently he studied Correggio and Parmigianino in Parma. Through this range of influences, he was able to develop an entirely personal pictorial language, and to launch a prolific, though brief, career.