Giovanni Giacomo Fiesco

De Castro's first patron was Giovanni Giacomo Fiesco (Morone), a Genoese merchant living in Antwerp. In 1569 the composer dedicated to him his first publication, Il primo libro di madrigali, canzoni e motetti.

• Fiesco, banker and trader in Antwerp
• Fiesco, member of the Genoese Nation
• Fiesco, nobleman and patron

Giovanni Giacomo Fiesco was born around 1535 into a Genoese bankers' family. His uncle Tommaso may have been the first member of the family to come down to Antwerp. In 1567 Tommaso was appointed consul of the Genoese Nation. Giovanni settled in Antwerp at the end of the 1550s. The earliest reference to his activities here could be found in a document dating from 1559 and now preserved in the Antwerp City Archive. In this document Giovanni, "merchant of the Genoese Nation" claimed to have lost five obligations in Antwerp and urgently called the finder to bring them back.

From 1569 until 1571 Giovanni Fiesco acted as moneylender to the Spanish Emperor Philip II in the combat against the Protestant rebellion.

"Joanni Fiesco xxvii julii ['69] quinquaginta quinque mille trecenti octoginta quatuor coronati viginti quotuor stuferi. 55384 cor. 24 st. Eidem Joanni Fiesco eodem die mille contum triginta quinque coronati quindecim stuferi. 1135 cor. 15 st. Joanni Fiesco Lazaro Spinulae Jacobo de Chavarri et Roderico Alvarez Chaldeira I novembris anni LXXI duo mille nonaginta novem coronati tredecim stuferi. 2099 cor. 13 st."

Cited in M.F. Rachfahl, Le registre de Franciscus Lixaldius, trésorier général
de l'armée espagnole aux Pays-Bas de 1567 à 1576, Brussels, 1902, p. 70-1

Giovanni Fiesco was in charge of financial affairs in Gent where Jean Baptista Spinola (who was to become one of the two consuls of the Genoese Nation in 1585) regularly stood surety for him, and in Besançon, where he redeemed bills of exchange for his uncle. He played a role in the confiscation on sea of Dutch and English merchandise by the Spanish government and was creditor of the renowned carpet-weaver Peter Van Uden and other local shopkeepers in Antwerp, such as the baker Anthonis Hortman and the shoemaker Jacob De Hont, who, to repay his debts, offered Fiesco a small organ.

At the end of the 1550s Fiesco left Genoa to settle as a banker and trader in Antwerp, where he entered the influential Genoese Nation. He lodged with the rich Genoese Jean Baptista Spinola (the later consul of the Nation) and became one of the trade partners of Stefano Gentile. He became a close friend of the wealthy merchant and art lover Giovanni Grimaldi: a register of the aldermen dating from 1578 and preserved in the Antwerp City Archive, mentions Fiesco's request for permission from the city of Antwerp to leave the city temporarily in order to go to Liège and visit Grimaldi, who was seriously ill.

Towards the end of his career, Fiesco's influence within the Genoese Nation increased. In 1585 he was one of the twelve prominent Genoese merchants who erected a triumph column at the Meir on occasion of Alexander Farnese's entry in Antwerp. According to some sources he was finally appointed consul of the Genoes Nation in 1597, together with Ottavio Spinola.