Giovanni Battista Crespi

Giovanni Battista Crespi, known as Il Cerano after the town where his family lived, was the leading painter in Milan in the early seventeenth century. His religious pictures are intense and spiritual, with elongated figures, rhythmic, flattened shapes and sophisticated colour.

He was born in Romagnano Sesia in 1573 and was supported by the Borromeo family, especially Cardinal Federico Borromeo. In 1602 he painted several of the huge canvases on the life of St Charles Borromeo that still hang in Milan Cathedral. He also designed the giant copper statue of the saint at Arona, known as the Sancarlone. He was a painter, sculptor and architect, taught at the Accademia Ambrosiana and oversaw works at the cathedral late in life.

Several of our pictures show St Charles Borromeo, the Milan archbishop at the centre of his art. He died in Milan in 1632.