Against the backdrop of a blue sky “strewn with clouds”, the resolute figure of Moses almost appears to direct the movements of the group of figures in the foreground [...]

With respect to the painters of the previous generation, Valerio Castello opened up new horizons during his short career and steered Genoese painting towards the Baroque. While taking up the early 16th-century Mannerism of Perin Del Vaga, Valerio reinterpreted the works of Correggio and Parmigianino in a dialogue initially mediated by the presence of the Milanese artist Giulio Cesare Procaccini in Genoa. His light, airy, fragmented painting found an ideal dimension in sketches that enjoyed immediate success with collectors, as exemplified by the small canvas addressed here. This can be identified as the “Moses striking water from the rock, sketch by Valerio Castello” mentioned by Federigo Alizeri in his description of the collection housed on the ground floor of Massimiliano Spinola’s residence (now the prefecture building).¹ The work is not mentioned as present there in the subsequent description of 1875² and no other change in ownership is documented. 

The canvas, which was already present in the Cerruti Collection in 1993, as attested in the handwritten inventory of that year, was identified as the Spinola “sketch” by Camillo Manzitti, who regards it as the preparatory study for the painting purchased by the Louvre in 1869 with the collection of Louis La Caze.³ Against the backdrop of a blue sky “strewn with clouds”, the resolute figure of Moses almost appears to direct the movements of the group of figures in the foreground, whose brightly coloured garments, caught in the diagonal shafts of light, stand out against the warm chromatic register of the composition and the gleams of the metal vessels. The latter constitute a citation of the painting of Castiglione, one of the artist’s points of reference. 

The sketch is built up around the figure of Moses, the apex of a closely worked composition in which, as pointed out by Manzitti, the figures are developed through a masterly handling of light and colour.⁴ The final painting instead displays a broader spatial dimension in which the figure of Moses stands out far less in the constant bustle of the crowded composition with its animated gestures and exchanges of looks (fig 1). The dating of the Louvre canvas in the middle of the 1650s suggests a similar date for the sketch. It was in this period of ever-increasing activity in the fields of decoration and fresco that Castello’s painting came to display greater exuberance and brighter colours with figures of less solidity and an accentuated dynamic rhythm. 

Gelsomina Spione

¹ “Mosè che trae acqua dalla rupe, bozza di Valerio Castello”, Alizeri 1846-47, vol. II, part I, p. 777.

² Alizeri 1875, p. 242.

³ Manzitti 2004, p. 154, no. 139; Loire 2006, pp. 80-81.

⁴ Manzitti 2004, p. 154, no. 139.