The versatile originality of Grechetto: the Nativity of St. Luke in Genoa

“An alchemist capable of recreating, within his paintings, an alternative reality.” This is how Giacomo Montanari defines one of the greatest champions of the Genoese seventeenth century, that Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, known to all as “il Grechetto,” who had distinguished himself for his versatility and his very high mimetic skills: with the sole power of colors he was able to reproduce on canvas any material, giving the relative priceless tactile sensations. The reasons for his nickname still remain obscure (unless one wants to believe the 18th-century tale reported in the Lives of Nicholas Pius, according to which, due to a disagreement with a client, the artist had moved to Rome dressed in Armenian dress and pretending to be Greek in order not to be recognized): the nickname is however attested for the first time in a payment of 1643, when his career was already well under way. We are, however, very clear about the reasons for his success: the originality of his inventions, his unparalleled talent as an imitator of nature, his rigorous design skills certified by his numerous drawings, a keen sense of color, and an open figurative culture capable of mediating between Rubens, Van Dyck, Poussin and the Ligurian tradition.

Today Grechetto’s name is known to the public especially for his animal paintings, one of the most abundant strands of his production and certainly the most familiar to those who frequent exhibitions and museums, but at theera in which the painter lived his talent was recognized for the great variety of genres that Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was able to tackle, arriving at qualitative outcomes that were always continuous, almost incapable of yielding: he was appreciated, especially in private, as a portrait painter, had a reputation as an extraordinary inventor of sacred and Old Testament scenes, and did not disdain pagan subjects. So much so that soon his name began to echo far beyond the borders of his native Genoa, and his paintings aroused astonishment in Rome as well as in the Marches, Naples, and Venice, until he arrived in Mantua where, in 1651, he had been called by the Gonzaga to become their court painter. Only six years earlier, in 1645, when we must imagine him as an already established 36-year-old, he had fired that altarpiece that can be considered a sort of summa of his talent, the Nativity for the church of San Luca in Genoa. It is, moreover, the first signed work by Grechetto known to us, as well as one of only five religious works intended for public display that we know of him.

When you enter the riot of marble, stucco and frescoes that is the Spinola’s aristocratic parish, you will find Grechetto’s Nativity on the left arm altar (the church of San Luca has a Greek cross plan): we still see it in the place for which it was conceived and painted. It is one of the most powerful and innovative paintings of seventeenth-century Genoa: for Carlo Giuseppe Ratti the Nativity was Grechetto’s true, unparalleled masterpiece, his best work. “Chosen is the drawing of that panel,” he wrote in his updating of Soprani’s Lives , “harmonious and well distributed are the tints, true and vividly expressed are the affections, in short, there is no part in it that is not surprising and marvelous.” The sacred epiphany takes place in the lower register: on a poor straw mattress, on which Grechetto pours all his talent as an alchemist, lies the Child whom a delicate Virgin, with the face of a child and mindful of Correggio’s Night , uncovers to show him to the shepherds’ view. The attitudes are spontaneous, natural: the Child, even, is caught sucking a finger. Behind the Virgin, St. Joseph, in a skillful piece of backlighting reminiscent of Poussin’s nativities of the 1930s, points the son of God out to the adoring people, who watch him with gazes shot through with motions of true, excited amazement. Further down, an iconographic invention by Grechetto: a grotesque-looking shepherd playing a dulciana, half-naked, his head girded with vines, almost as if recalling a satyr from the pagan processions of Dionysus, a character from the bacchanals of a Poussin or a Rubens. According to Montanari, the unusual presence conceals a conciliatory universal message of peace: the shepherd-satyr is the figure who points to Christ as the mediator between pagan antiquity and the Christian present. An idea that we can also imagine emphasized by the structure of the hut, with mighty columns supporting a thatched roof, and beyond which we glimpse the vestiges of a classical temple. Even the extinguished lamp under the manger, according to Lauro Magnani, amplifies the idea of Christ as the true light of the world, ending the search for Diogenes, who according to a well-known anecdote wandered around with a lantern in search of “the man.”

Above, however, here is the mystical apparition of four angels, harking back to the upper part of Rubens’ Circumcision for the Gesù church in Genoa but whose naturalism is mindful of Grechetto’s Roman experience: fluid brushstrokes suggest the sensation of the wind stirring the robes, while mellow, luminous clumps offer the viewer the sparkle of the silver of which the thurible and shuttle that the four divine messengers hold in their hands are made. They are scattering incense, as is done before every religious service, to highlight the sacredness of Jesus’ birth: this, too, is an unusual iconographic solution, transforming the miserable hut into a Christian temple. Besides, Grechetto, even in such a dense composition, so imbued with mysticism, could not give up his animals, which indeed manage to carve out a starring role for themselves. Animal presences that, Lauro Magnani has written, “almost seem to be a polemical affirmation of equal dignity between different pictorial genres and in all likelihood fit into an articulate iconographic context, as often for our artist, of difficult decryption.” Here, then, on the left, just behind the Virgin’s shoulders, is the donkey looking directly at the viewer, while we see below the dog participating in the revelation with intensity identical to that of humans, signifying that Christ’s coming into the world is something that concerns everyone. Near the dog, two lively ducks have tipped over the wicker basket that contained them. Even the angels unfold large, white dove-like wings.

For all these reasons, Grechetto’s Nativity is one of his most prized works, as well as one of the most admired paintings of seventeenth-century Genoa. We can venture that for Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, a painter who until then had expressed himself mostly in private contexts, the San Luca altarpiece was an unprecedented endeavor: never had he worked on such a large format (the canvas is four meters high) and so unusual because of its elongated shape, never had he had the opportunity to pour the wide variety of his artistic interests onto a single canvas, never at that age, from what we know, had he painted for such a central church as that of San Luca. It was, therefore, also a matter of lending himself to easy comparisons with what had previously been produced by more titled painters than himself. What came out was a sumptuous painting, where every element participates in the intensity of the scene with studied harmony, even if the result appears spontaneous to us, precisely because of the finesse with which Grechetto warps his composition, because of the mastery with which the painter sets up the effects of light looking above all to Poussin, that is, with continuous but carefully calibrated variations on a background that stands out for its earthy colors.

The Nativity, lauded by all who wrote about it, would soon become an important test case for all contemporary and later painters: “a point of reference,” wrote Jonathan Bober, “not only for artists who were directly inspired by Castiglione, but also for those who wished to make a reuption in the field of sacred painting, provoking countless other interpretations. More generally, the perfect synthesis of mannerist and classical, ecstatic and naturalistic elements pointed the way for all subsequent Genoese expressions of visionary imagination, from Domenico Piola to Alessandro Magnasco, including Giovanni Battista Gaulli.” Grechetto, with his Nativity, had already become a model.

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