Valerio Castello

Valerio Castello (1624–1659) was a leading painter of the Genoese Baroque. The youngest son of the painter Bernardo Castello, he was apprenticed to Domenico Fiasella and Giovanni Andrea de' Ferrari, then studied in Milan and Parma, absorbing Rubens and van Dyck.

He painted cycles in Genoese churches and excelled in turbulent battle pieces and histories such as the Rape of the Sabines, his compositions full of Rubens-inspired movement. Between 1655 and 1659 he frescoed the vaults of the Palazzo Balbi-Senarega, his masterpiece, including a Chariot of Time. He died suddenly in Genoa in 1659, aged about thirty-five.