Giovanni Cassana

Name
Giovanni Cassana
Date of birth
1658
Place of birth
Venice/Italy
Date of death
1720
Place of death
Geneva/Switzerland
Gender
Male
Biography
Giovanni Agostino Cassana (Abate) (Venice c.1658 –1720 Genoa) An Italian painter of the Baroque period, Giovanni Agostino Cassana was born into a family of artists of Genoese extraction. He was the son of the painter Giovanni Francesco Cassana who went to Venice to work with Bernardo Strozzi, where he raised three artist sons, Giovanni Agostino who was the eldest, the portrait painter Niccolò and still life painter Giovanni Battista. Giovanni Agostino was first taught by his father.

Cassana worked briefly for the ducal palace at Guastalla (Emilia-Romagna) then moved to Florence in 1670 to work at the court of Ferdinando de’ Medici and often moved between Venice and Florence. It was said that Giovanni Agostino declined to compete with his brother Niccolà in painting portraits and historical subjects. Although proficient in painting portraits and genre scenes, he preferred painting still lifes and animals in the Northern manner of the Flemish painter Jacob van de Kerckhove (Antwerp 1627–1712 Venice), called Jacopo da Castello, whom he knew in Venice and who had been taught by the Flemish animal painter Jan Fyt (1611–1661). He was also influenced by the Genoese still life painter, Antonio Maria Vasallo (1620–1673).