Dictionary of


Art  &  Artist




 

 Giulio Benso

 

Giulio Benso      

(b Pieve di Teco, 30 Oct 1592; d Pieve di Teco, 6 Nov 1668).

Italian painter and draughtsman. Around 1605 he came to Genoa, where he presented himself to a leading patron of the arts, Gian Carlo Doria, who gave him lodging and recommended him to Giovanni Battista Paggi, in whose influential studio he trained. Students were required first to copy sketches, then paintings and reliefs and, finally, to draw from nature. Benso made many copies after a variety of source material, among them the Sacrifice of Abraham (Florence, Uffizi) after Luca Cambiaso and the Joseph Sold into Slavery (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) after Raphael. While still with Paggi, Benso produced ‘bizarre sketches of great number and variety, as he had a fertile mind along with a lively and vigorous imagination’ (Soprani, p. 280). In order to learn perspective he constructed architectural models, which were greatly admired; they enabled him to achieve formidable feats of aerial perspective in his paintings, in which figures and ornament are boldly foreshortened.

The Madonna and Child with angels, Saint Benedict and Saint Scolastica