This luminous panel is a wonderful example of Luca Cambiaso’s early style and one which presents several interesting clues to his development between 1545 and 1550. The artist’s confident and fluid brushwork, which he used to simultaneously outline and shadow his figures, attests to the precocious talent that separated his work from that of his contemporaries and made him become one of the most admired painters of his time. It is a style which is more often found in Cambiaso’s earlier fresco work, such as his decorations for the Prefettura in Genoa, dated to around 1547-48; it also recalls a frescoed frieze by Niccola Granello in the Villa Doria in Pegli, which dates to around five years later.

Belgian Private Collection.