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LAZZARO TAVARONE
Genoa c.1556 ~ 1641 Genoa
Lazzaro Tavarone is thought to have studied with Luca Cambiaso from the late 1560s. His most successful work was carried out between 1610 and 1630 in
narrative frescoes for both religious and secular buildings in Genoa. He was a prolific draughtsman and made many preparatory drawings for his various commissions. The importance that he attached to drawings led to
his collecting them in large quantity, including some by his master, Cambiaso. His own drawings include quadratura designs in pen and ink and many figure drawings from the life. The latter were often executed in black chalk heightened with white on paper prepared with a striking brick-red wash. This technique, which became almost a trademark of Tavarone's style, was used for his preparatory studies for frescoes. However, as few of these figure drawings can be connected with known works, it has been suggested that many of his frescoes have not yet been identified.1
Our drawing, a very typical example of those on red prepared paper,
remains among the unidentified group. It is comparable, in style and technique, to a study for a seated youth in the fresco, The Marriage of the Virgin, Santa Maria delle Vigne, Genoa, dated 1612,2 and to a study for the figure of an Indian in a frieze surrounding the fresco, The Return of Columbus,
Palazzo Belimbau, Genoa, dated 1614.3 The almost blank eyes seen in our drawing, and in that of the Indian, are typical of Cambiaso and his Genoese followers.
1. Mary Newcome, The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, vol. 30, pp.372–373.
2. Mary Newcome, 'Drawings by Tavarone' in Paragone, no. 375, May, 1981, pp.44–49, fig. 30.
3. Ibid., fig. 32c.
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