(b Gandino, nr Bergamo, c. 1509; d Madrid, 3 June 1569). Painter, stuccoist and architect. He was the son of Giovanni Maria Castello, who was also probably an artist. According to Soprani and other early sources, Castello arrived in Genoa c. 1540-41 as an assistant of Aurelio Busso, a painter from Cremona, to paint monochromatic fa?ade decorations on palaces and villas of aristocratic patrons. Their painted classical reliefs for the rear garden fa?ade of the Palazzo della Meridiana, which was begun c. 1540 by Cardinal Gerolamo and Giovanni Battista Grimaldi on the Salita S Francesco, include the Labours of Hercules and the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs; these are among the best examples of Busso's Raphaelesque decorative style. Twentieth-century scholarship has placed Castello in the shadow of LUCA CAMBIASO, who is seen as the principal decorator to the nobili vecchi (the old noble families of Genoa) during the third quarter of the 16th century. However, Castello's career is even more crucial to the development of a distinctively Genoese High Renaissance decorative style between c. 1540 and 1575. Soprani reported that Tobia Pallavicino, a man of distinguished learning, took Castello under his protection and sent him to Rome during the 1540s to study painting, sculpture and architecture. While in Rome, Castello was influenced by such works as Raphael's loggia frescoes in the Villa Farnesina and Giulio Romano's decorations at the Villa Madama.
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