Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (baptized 23 March 1609[2] – 5 May 1664) was an Italian Baroque painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school.

Wittkower describes him as a "passionate student" of Anthony van Dyck, who arrived in 1621, and Peter Paul Rubens, who stayed in the city in the first decade of the 17th century and whose paintings were readily accessible there.

He was back in Rome in 1647, before moving in 1651 to be a court artist in Mantua for Duke Carlo II and his wife Isabella Chiara de Austria.

The Queen's Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his work was held in 2013, made the following statement: "Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was also a violent and impetuous man, who was repeatedly in court for assault, allegedly attempted to throw his sister off a roof and was forced to leave Rome, probably after committing murder.

He also executed some sixty etchings, arguably the most famous of which is The Genius of Castiglione,[5] published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi in 1648.

Castiglione's attention to detail in the depiction of nature is regarded as proof of the influence of Scorza and the Flemish still life and animal painter Jan Roos who was a long-term resident of Genoa.

[11] Among those who engraved after him were Giovanni Lorenzo Bertolotto in Genoa,[12] the Venetian Anton Maria Zanetti, Michele l'Asne, Louis de Chatillon, and Coreneille Coemans.

The Presepio (Nativity of Jesus) for the church of San Luca, Genoa, ranks among his most celebrated paintings, and the Louvre contains eight characteristic examples.