The most remarkable quality of this distinguished Genoese painter was
his rapidity of operation. He began to paint when ten years old, under
the eye of his father, Giovanni Cambiaso, who evinced good taste in
setting him to copy some works by the correct and noble Mantegna. His
progress was so rapid that at the age of seventeen he was entrusted to
decorate some façades and chambers of the Doria palace at Genoa, where
he displayed his rash facility of hand by painting the story of Niobe on
a space of wall fifty palms long and of proportionate height, without
cartoons or any drawing larger than his first hasty sketch on a single
sheet of paper! While he was engaged on this work, there came one
morning some Florentine artists to look at it. Seeing a lad enter soon
after, and commence painting with prodigious fury, they called out to
him to desist; but his mode of handling the brushes and colors, which
they had imagined it was his business merely to clean or pound, soon
convinced them that this daring youngster was no other than Luca
himself; whereupon they crossed themselves, and declared he would one
day eclipse Michael Angelo.