Giovanni Battista Carlone: life and works

Giovanni Battista Carlone (1603–1684) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Genoa.

Carlone was born and died in Genoa. He came from a intimates of artists: his dad 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 approximately 20 canvases and frescoes. However his artistic profligacy as well as diluted the force of individuality in the paintings which, in style, seem to occupy an imprecise provincial power between Mannerism and Baroque. His son, Andrea Carlone was a painter.

In the center and principal nave of the Vastato, he has represented the Adoration of the Magi; the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem; the Resurrection; the Ascension ; the Descent of the Holy Ghost; and the Assumption of the Virgin. In the similar church he painted Presentation in the Temple and Christ preaching to the Pharisees.