Luca Cambiaso

Luca Cambiaso was the leading painter in sixteenth-century Genoa and is seen as the founder of its school. He painted large frescoes and altarpieces, and he is known for simplifying figures into near-geometric, block-like shapes, and for tender night scenes lit by a single candle.

He was born in 1527 in Moneglia, near Genoa, the son of the painter Giovanni Cambiaso, and was working with his father on frescoes as a teenager. He painted in many Genoese churches and palaces, often working fresco directly from sketches rather than full cartoons. In 1583 he went to Spain to work for Philip II at the Escorial, where he painted the Paradise fresco on the church vault. He died there in 1585. His Madonna of the Candle dates from 1575.

In Venus and Adonis, look at how smooth and rounded the bodies are. That simplifying habit is his signature.