Page 49 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

Fig. 4 G.B. CASTIGLIONE Fig. 5 ANTHONYVAN DYCK Fig. 6 G.B. CASTIGLIONE
MysticalVision of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Nativity, San Luca, Genoa.
Santa Maria della Cella, Genova-Sampierdarena. Francesco Orero Adoring Christ on the Cross with
Saints Francis and Bernard,San Michele,
San Michele di Pagana, Rapallo

C astiglione’s next public work of religious subject, the altarpiece of the Nativity in San Luca, was a very
different matter (Fig. 6).11 An archetypal subject for the family church of the powerful Spinola family,
the commission would have presented a special opportunity and challenge. In its monumental size, nearly four
meters high, rather narrow proportions, and generally warm, deep palette, not to mention the rather pagan

10. See M. Newcome,‘Drawings by Castiglione’, Paragone, 377 (1981), p. 33.
11. The most complete discussion of the painting remains L. Magnani in Genoa 1990, cat. no. 14. See also L. Magnani in Genoa,

Palazzo Spinola and Palazzo Reale: Genova nell’età barocca, catalogue of the exhibition, Genoa 1992, cat. no. 54, and more
recentlyT. Standring’s presentation of a small-scale version,‘L’Adoration des bergers, 1959, de Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
au musée du Louvre,’ Revue du Louvre, 52/2 (2002), pp. 43-54.

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