Paolo Gerolamo Piola

Paolo Gerolamo Piola was the son of the Genoese painter Domenico Piola with whom he began working at a very young age and whose style he borrowed. Paolo Gerolamo Piola spent his entire career in Genoa, apart from a short stay with his father and brother in Piacenza in 1684, and a period of apprenticeship in Rome in the workshop of Carlo Maratta from 1690 to 1694. When his father died in 1703, he took over the workshop, called Casa Piola, which at that time enjoyed a real monopoly on artistic activity in Genoa. The workshop was capable of creating and controlling all aspects of the production of decorations, both in paintings and sculptures as in stuccos and quadratures.