Carlo Antonio and the bottega Procaccini

This study investigates the career of Carlo Antonio Procaccini, a member of one of the most prominent artistic families of the early Italian Seicento. Together with his brothers Camillo and Giulio Cesare, he was instrumental in establishing a famous workshop in Milan playing a fundamental role in the artistic renovation of the Borromean era: one of the most fascinating periods in Lombard history. Celebrated by seventeenth century sources, Carlo Antonio’s career has been largely underestimated. The essay re-affirms his legacy as the most important North Italian landscape painter of the first three decades of the seventeenth century, highlighting how his art thrived in the uniqueness of the Milanese artistic environment, characterised by prosperous economy, post-Tridentine reform, Spanish patrons, links with northern Europe and artistic eclecticism.