Giulio Campi was an Italian painter and architect. His brothers Vincenzo Campi

Vincenzo Campi

Vincenzo Campi was an Italian painter of the Renaissance from Cremona.His style merges Lombard with Mannerist styles, however, unlike his siblings, he is known for a series of canvases, mostly painted after 1570s , displaying genre scenes and local produce. Many set at a food store front of some...

 and Antonio Campi

Antonio Campi

Antonio Campi was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.He was born in Cremona. His style merges Lombard with Mannerist styles. In Cremona, his extended family were the main artistic produce. Giulio Campi and Antonio were reportedly half-brothers, while Vincenzo Campi was a full brother....

 were also renowned painters.

Biography

The eldest of a family prominent painters, Campi was born at Cremona

Cremona

Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...

. His father Galeazzo (1475–1536) taught him the first lessons in art.

In 1522, in Mantua

Mantua

Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

, he studied painting, architecture, and modelling under Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...

. He visited Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, became an ardent student of the antique, and like Bernardino

Bernardino Campi

Bernardino Campi was an Italian Renaissance painter from Reggio Emilia, who worked in Cremona. He is known as one of the teachers of Sofonisba Anguissola and of Giovanni Battista Trotti . In Cremona, his extended family were the main artistic studios...

 — distantly related to him — he combined a Lombard and Roman traditions. He collaborated on some works with Camillo Boccaccino

Camillo Boccaccino

Camillo Boccaccino was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period, active mainly in Cremona and regions of Lombardy. He was the son and pupil of the painter Boccaccio Boccaccino. He was known to Gian Paolo Lomazzo and Giorgio Vasari...

, the son of Boccaccio Boccaccino

Boccaccio Boccaccino

Boccaccio Boccaccino was a painter of the early Italian Renaissance, belonging to the Emilian school. He is profiled in Vasari's Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori .He was born in Ferrara and studied there, probably under Domenico Panetti...

, with whom Campi may also have received training.

Campi is called the "Ludovico Carracci

Ludovico Carracci

Ludovico Carracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna....

 of Cremona" although he preceded the founder of the Eclectics. When but twenty-seven Giulio executed for the church of Sant' Abbondio his masterpiece, a Virgin and Child with Sts. Celsus and Nazarus, a decoration masterly in the freedom of its drawing and in the splendour of its colour. His numerous paintings are grandly and reverently conceived, freely drawn, vigorously coloured, lofty in style, and broadly handled. He was animated in all his work by a deep piety. Numerous of his fresco works are housed in churches of Cremona, Mantua

Mantua

Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

, Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

and in the church of Saint Margaret's, in his native town. Among his chief works are the Descent from the Cross (S. Sigismondo) at Cremona, and the frescoes in the dome of S. Girolamo at Mantua. An altar-piece in S. Sigismondo and his Labours of Hercules were engraved by the celebrated Ghiso, il Mantovano.

He died in Cremona in 1572.