Giulio Cesare Procaccini Biography
Giulio Cesare Procaccini was born in Bologna in 1574. Like his brothers, he received his artistic education in the family workshop in Bologna. The family moved to Milan when Giulio was still a child and he lived here mainly throughout his life. At the beginning of his career, Procaccini dedicated himself to sculpture, but after 1600 he concentrated exclusively on painting, becoming one of the leading painters of the Milanese art scene. In 1590 he began working as an assistant sculptor on the construction site of the Cathedral and, subsequently, for the façade of Santa Maria presso San Celso. In 1611, contacts with the Genoese environment began to intensify and Procaccini began to receive his first commissions from Giovanni Carlo Doria, who would be his most important collector until 1622. In 1619, together with his brother Camillo, he worked in Turin for the princes of the House of Savoy. His last painting, the Self-Portrait of 1624, preserved in Brera, is considered a masterpiece of intense and melancholy expressiveness which underlines all its high artistic value. Procaccini died in Milan on 14 November 1625.
