(Moneglia 1527–1585 Madrid)
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist,
oil on canvas, 80 x 77.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Camillo Manzitti for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

The present painting is an example of a rare, early work by Luca Cambiaso, datable to around 1545. It was most probably made for private devotion, and it already displays the Genoese painter’s distinctive pictorial language: The figures are characterised by a sculpturally volumetric form emerging from a dark background, and the use of light that anticipates the solutions typically associated with the Seicento of Caravaggio. Caught in a moment of great intimacy, the figures in the present composition are strikingly realistic. Moreover, the application of colour, distinguished by his uniform tonal fields, combined with the compact outlining of the forms, reveal Cambiaso’s knowledge of the work of Michelangelo.

Luca Cambiaso was among the leading painters in Genoa during the second half of the sixteenth century, at a time when the city was experiencing great economic prosperity and its aristocracy was ascendant throughout Italy and Europe. The artist was apprenticed by his father Giovanni and collaborated with him on the fresco decoration of Palazzo Doria dell’Acquasola in Genoa. He travelled to Rome in the company of Giovan Battista Castello, called il Bergamasco and here, he came under the influence of Michelangelo and Perin del Vaga. From Rome the painter travelled to Emilia where he studied first-hand the paintings of Parmigianino and Correggio. On his return to Genoa, Cambiaso focused his activities on the production of altarpieces and executed various nocturnal compositions, among these the Madonna of the Candle (Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, inv. no. PB 1958) and the Christ before Caiaphas (Museo dell’Accademia Linguistica di Belle Arti, Genoa, inv. MAL 66) which anticipated the work of Caravaggio by half a century. In 1583 Cambiaso was called to Spain by Philip II to work in the Escorial and was appointed painter to the Spanish court, where he executed his final great works in fresco.