BARTOLOMEO BISCAINO (Genoa 1632-1657 Genoa) The Death of Adonis.
Oil on paper mounted on card stock. 222x290 mm; 9x11 1/2 inches. Inscribed "Di Giulio Cesare Procaccino" in ink on the mount verso.
Provenance: Private collection, Massachusetts.
Published: Affronti, Biscaino e Castello: due artisti a confronto, 2008, page 44, number 15 (illustrated).
Born and trained in Genoa, Biscaino first studied with his father Giovanni Andrea, a landscape painter of limited ambition. Around 1649-1650 he entered the studio of Valerio Castello (1625-1659), one of the leading Baroque painters in Genoa, where, alongside Stefano Magnasco and Giovanni Battista Merano, he became one of Castello's most celebrated pupils. However, Biscaino distinguished himself from the others for his stylistic autonomy, especially for his distinctive renderings of the female figures' features and for his depiction of gracefully folding drapery. Biscaino was one of the most gifted of seicento Genoese painters, yet his life was cut short by an outbreak of plague at the age of twenty-eight.
