Known as Lissandrino, he had his father Stefano as his first teacher; he was then a pupil of Valerio Castello. Around 1682 he went to Milan where he was a pupil of Filippo Abbiati. Here he was influenced above all by contemporary Venetian painting, made of pasty and flaking material with violent contrasts both in color and in light, characteristics that would later strongly characterize his style. Considered one of the most original painters of the Italian eighteenth century, he distinguished himself, in popular genre painting, for a brushstroke rich in luminous contrasts with which he created dark apparatuses and distorted figures, anticipating the painting of the following centuries. From 1703 to 1710 Magnasco was in Florence in the service of the Medici, then again in Milan, before returning to Genoa where he worked until his death.

Bibliography
F. Franchini Guelfi, Magnasco, Alessandro, in Biographical Dictionary of Italians, 67 (2006)
Alessandro Magnasco. Gli anni della maturità di un pittore anticonformista. Exhibition catalog (Genoa, Palazzo Bianco Museum, 2016), edited by F. Franchini Guelfi, Parisi, Galleria Canesso, 2016