‘Castiglione: Lost Genius’ loses his genius in a sea of brown

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I was properly aware of being the one who wrote The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; clearly not the same man. The artist Castiglione was a tempestuous character, always losing his temper and getting into fights. He tried to throw his sister off a roof and is said to have committed murder; perhaps more importantly for his artistic career, when he was at the height of his popularity in Genoa, he slashed to shreds a painting commissioned for the Doge of Venice, and fled the city in which he was born and trained. He seems to have been self-sabotaging at every opportunity, and there are easy parallels to be found with Caravaggio (1571/2–1610), with whose equally turbulent life he just overlapped. He never achieved the position or popularity he deserved, but in the 18th century his work was rediscovered, and became a particular inspiration to Giambattista Tiepolo.