Valerio Castello

Valerio Castello was one of the most gifted Genoese painters of the seventeenth century. His work is full of movement: swirling figures, quick, fluid brushwork and warm, glowing colour. He was compared in his own time to both Tintoretto and Veronese.

He was born in Genoa in 1624, the son of the painter Bernardo Castello, and trained with Domenico Fiasella and Giovanni Andrea de’ Ferrari. Around 1640 to 1645 he travelled to Milan and Parma, where he studied Correggio and Lombard painters, and he also absorbed the influence of van Dyck. He painted religious, mythological and battle scenes, including The Rape of the Sabines in the Palazzo Brignole Sale and frescoes in the cupola of the Santissima Annunziata del Vastato in Genoa. He died in 1659, aged only 35.

In Rebecca at the Well, look at the light, flickering brushwork that makes the figures seem to move.