Assereto Gioacchino
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(b Genoa, 1600; d Genoa, 28 June 1649).
Italian painter. At the age of 12 he studied with Luciano Borzone
and c. 1614 entered the Genoese studio of Andrea Ansaldo. Among a
number of lost early paintings was a large Temptation of St Anthony
done at the age of 16 (Soprani, p. 273). Several complex
compositions with small figures, including the Apotheosis of St
Thomas Aquinas (Lille, Mus. B.-A.), the Last Supper (Genoa, Mus.
Accad. Ligustica B.A.), the Stoning of St Stephen (Lucca, Mus. &
Pin. N.) and the Crowning of the Virgin (Taggia, Dominican Convent), perhaps date from 1616–26. These are close
in style to works such as Bernardo Strozzi’s bozzetto (c. 1620;
Genoa, Mus. Accad. Ligustica B.A.) for an altarpiece of Paradise
(destr.) and to other contemporary works by Ansaldo, Giulio Benso
and Giovanni Andrea de’ Ferrari, which also derive their figure
style from Mannerism. Assereto’s earliest dated painting, SS John
the Baptist, Bernard, Catherine, Lucy and George (1626; Recco, S
Giovanni Battista), is distinguished by its silvery colour and
dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and by the powerful realism
and vitality of the individual saints. Here he absorbed Borzone’s
sfumato technique and skill as a portrait painter, while the crisp
contours of the drapery suggest Ansaldo. Assereto’s work from c.
1626–36 sparkles with rich colour and detail, as in the strikingly
naturalistic and intense Ecstasy of St Francis (163(?6); Genoa,
Cassa di Risparmio, see Pesenti, fig. 354). The work of the Lombard
Mannerist painters Cerano, Morazzone and Giulio Cesare Procaccini
that had influenced Strozzi and Ansaldo before 1620 also had an
effect on Assereto’s early work. This is apparent in the elongated
figures and high-keyed colours of his two octagonal vault frescoes,
David and Abimelech and SS John and Peter Healing the Lame Man, in
SS Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa. The frescoes were dated after 1639
by Soprani, but a date of c. 1630 seems stylistically more
convincing. Sharp-edged draperies, meticulous ornamental detail and
jewel-like colours ranging from lime to pink and orange characterize
Assereto’s vivid narrative painting Alexander and Diogenes (c. 1630;
Berlin, Gemäldegal.) and his altarpiece SS Cosmas and Damian Curing
the Sick (Genoa, SS Cosma e Damiano), in which some of the figures
resemble those by Orazio de’ Ferrari, who may have worked with
Assereto in Ansaldo’s studio.
