Gioacchino Assereto

The artist was very successful in Genoa and in his later years many copies of his work were produced in his studio, some by his son Giuseppe Assereto.

Throughout the decade in which he was a student, Assereto produced many works in a Baroque idiom, which were close in style and genre.

In 1640 Assereto painted The Lamentation,[4] a powerful picture which uses a black background and intense shadows to give dramatic effect to Christ's dead body that almost seems to shimmer in the darkness.

[5] A work also showing this Caravaggist influence is the Death of Cato (Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa), in which Assereto moved away from his refined style with vivid colours to a bolder, more powerful style where theatrical effects of flaming torches and candlelight emphasize violent emotions.

The work also shows the influence of northern Caravaggesque painters such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Matthias Stom.

He also introduced a greater emotional involvement in his works through the use of lights and colours that reveal the knowledge of the Venetian school.