CARAGLIO Gian Giacomo

(Verona or Parma 1500c.- Krakow 1565)

Italian painter and engraver, commonly known as Jacobus Veronensis, as he used to sign his works and how he was reported by Giorgio Vasari. According to the testimony of Vasari, Caraglio was also an engraver of medals, goldsmith, and architect.

Follower of Marcantonio Raimondi, he worked in Rome until 1527, where he realized several subjects from Parmigianino, Perin del Vaga, Rosso Fiorentino, Baccio Bandinelli, Giulio Romano and Raffaello. Forced to leave the city because of the plunder of Rome he moved to Venice where he continued his work as a painter and engraver until 1537.

During the Venetian period he dedicated himself mainly to the reproduction of works by Titian. Later, emigrated to Poland, he had the merit of spreading the graphic language of the Italian school in Eastern Europe.

In 1545 Caraglio entered the court of Sigismondo I and, at the king’s death, went to the service of Sigismund II and performed precious works of goldsmiths and medals. In 1552 he worked in Vilnius, Lithuania, the second capital of the united kingdom where the Royal Court had moved and where Jacopo operated alternating his stay in Poland with some trips to Italy, until the year of his death in Krakow in August 1565. (The date and place of death is controversial, according to some sources this would have happened in Parma in 1570).