Fabrizio Castello was an Italian painter of Genoese origin settled in Spain.
Background
He was the son of the historical painter Giovanni Battista Castello, and arrived in Spain around 1567 when his father had been called by Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz to work on his palace in Viso del Marquéson After his father"s death in 1569, Castello was in the care of his half brother Niccolò Granello, who taught him the trade.
Career
He was a fresco painter who specialized in ornamental painting grotesques. lieutenant has documented that in March 1576 Granello, painter to the king, increased the salary of his half-brother, who worked as his assistant. An obligation which was released in October 1577, when upon reaching the maturity began to appear in the factory books from the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial independently, with a salary of 5 reales day.
In June 1584 Castello was appointed painter to the king, with a salary of 16 ducats per month.
With a repertoire of fantastic and allegorical motifs, and inspired by the designs of Perino del Vaga, the four painters completed in just six months the painting of the nearly two hundred feet across the room, and charged for non-work the inconsiderable figure of 1000 ducados. The same team then worked on painting the roofs of the two rooms of the chapter, while in the hall retouched paintings, work that occupied them throughout the following year.
In January 1587 they were hired for the large fresco painting of the Battle of Louisiana Higueruela in the same room, a very different sort of painting of grotesques which was made and for which it served as a model of an old canvas painted in grisaille found in the Alcázar of Segovia and restored by Castello in 1581. After this painting, in September 1589, with Granello and Tavarone, as Cambiasi had returned to Italy, he was hired to work on the paintings of the remaining walls, accounting for the first four episodes devoted to the Battle of Saint Quentin.
In February 1591, even without concluding these frescoes, he began working on painting the grotesques.