Gaspare Celio

Who was Gaspare Celio?

Gaspare Celio was an Italian painter of the late-Mannerist and early-Baroque period, active mainly in his native city of Rome.

Celio was the pupil of Circignani, according to Baglione, but of Cristoforo Roncalli, if we are to believe Abate Titi.

His first commissions in about 1596 were completed with Giuseppe Valeriano who asked Celio to decorate the Chapel of the Passion in the church of il Gesù in Rome. This work was done after the design of P. Giovanni Battista Fiammeri. He also paints a Madonna and Bambino, now in Santa Maria del Carmine, a The Passage of Moses through the Red Sea in a vault of the Palazzo Mattei, a Death of the Giants. He painted a St Francis for the altar of the Ospizio at Ponte Sisto. He painted a History of S. Raimondo at the Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Between 1620 -1638 he helps publish a guide to the churches and artwork in Rome. He engraved antique statues. He briefly worked in Parma as a painter for the court of Ranuccio Farnese .