Giovanni Battista Carlone
Italian, 1603-1684
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Giovanni Battista Carlone was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Genoa.
Carlone was born and died in Genoa. He came from a family of artists: his father Taddeo, uncle, and cousins were sculptors, and his older brother Giovanni Bernardo Carlone was a painter, trained in Rome and married to the daughter of Bernardo Castello. Giovanni Bernardo, however, died at age 40.
Giovanni Battista may have had some training under Domenico Passignano. He was remarkably prolific both in terms of offspring (24 children) by a single matron (Nicoletta Scorza), and paintings and frescoes; and likely these two facts were not independent, since the sheer output strongly suggests the hands of many in his paintings. His paintings throng local churches; for example, the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato alone contains nearly 20 canvases and frescoes. However his artistic profligacy also diluted the force of individuality in the paintings which, in style, seem to occupy an imprecise provincial talent between Mannerism and Baroque. His son, Andrea Carlone was a painter.
