National Gallery of Art, Washington,
May 3–August 16, 2020
Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, October 3, 2020–January 10, 2021
The visual arts in Genoa at the beginning of the 17th century exhibited extraordinary diversity and richness. The city’s enormous wealth enabled its artists and their patrons to create an exuberant expression of the baroque style through works of material and visual splendor. A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 is the first comprehensive exhibition of the period in nearly 30 years and the first of this scale in the United States. Organized in partnership with the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, it features some 130 paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, drawings, and prints from 56 lenders, including 13 private collections and five churches in Genoa and Liguria. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog, this landmark exhibition will be on view from May 3 through August 16, 2020, in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.
One of the most important ports in the Mediterranean and a formidable maritime power, Genoa became a functioning republic in the early 16th century and steadily transformed itself into the banking center of Europe. Its leading families accumulated extraordinary wealth and in their competition for social prestige and political position invested it in visual culture: civil construction, ecclesiastical projects, and, above all, their own residences, which were then filled with the fresco decoration and collections for which the city is still famed. Aided by its unique strategic position in relation to numerous Italian centers and the dominions of the king of Spain (Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Flanders), Genoa developed far-reaching commercial and financial networks, and a tradition of exchange of all kinds. Its culture took on an incomparably varied and complex expression.
“Genoese artists and their patrons created an art that was a singularly rich and beautiful expression of baroque style,” said Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art. "We are grateful to our partner organization, the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, lending institutions, Genoa’s city museums, and private collections, as well as to the churches in Genoa and Liguria who generously lent their priceless treasures for this remarkable exhibition."
Exhibition Organization
“Genoese artists and their patrons created an art that was a singularly rich and beautiful expression of baroque style,” said Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art. "We are grateful to our partner organization, the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, lending institutions, Genoa’s city museums, and private collections, as well as to the churches in Genoa and Liguria who generously lent their priceless treasures for this remarkable exhibition."
Exhibition Organization
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, with special cooperation from the City and Museums of Genoa.
Exhibition Curators
Exhibition Curators
The exhibition is curated by Jonathan Bober, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings National Gallery of Art; Piero Boccardo, superintendent of collections for the City of Genoa; and Franco Boggero, director of historic and artistic heritage at the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, Genoa.
About the Exhibition
Organized by themes within the broad stylistic development of the period, A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 features some 60 paintings: masterpieces by non-Genoese artists drawn to the city’s vital environment, including Peter Paul Rubens, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Orazio Gentileschi, Anthony van Dyck; outstanding works by the school’s few artists who are well known because of their activity outside the city—Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Alessandro Magnasco; and superb examples by native Genoese painters who worked primarily in the city and remain largely unknown—Gioacchino Assereto, Valerio Castello, Domenico Piola, Gregorio De Ferrari, and Bartolomeo Guidobono.
Sculpture attained the level and exuberance of painting in the second half of the 17th century. Represented in the exhibition are several full-size statues by masters such as Pierre Puget, Filippo Parodi, and Anton Maria Maragliano, as well as terracotta sketches and exquisite bronze repetitions of monumental groups. In the decorative arts, collaborations between Genoese designers and Flemish craftsmen—in particular, Mattheus Melijn and Giovanni Aelbosca Belga—yielded ceremonial silver ensembles from the beginning of the period that are among the most spectacular in Europe. The outstanding quality of this silverwork epitomizes Genoese craftsmanship and its basis in the close interactions between patrons, painters, and silversmiths.
Equally important are the period’s works on paper—some 60 are on view, many by the same artists responsible for the paintings and objects. The largest group of 18 works comes from Genoa’s city museums, while 15 works are from the Gallery’s own collection, most just recently acquired. The drawings exemplify the elaborate technique, pictorial character, and production of autonomous function that distinguish Genoese draftsmanship during the period. Though relatively few Genoese artists explored the technique of etching, Castiglione and his follower Bartolomeo Biscaino surpassed any other native Italian printmaker in imagination and fluency.
Monumental fresco decoration emerged as the essential Genoese art form in the second half of the 16th century. Over the next century and a half, the leading painters collaborated with specialists in fictive architecture and stucco sculptors to create incomparably rich ensembles. The projects of Castello, Piola, and De Ferrari mark the apex of this tradition as well as one of the great chapters in European interior decoration. The exhibition conveys the significance and enthralling beauty of these ensembles through a selection of bozzetti (preliminary compositional studies in oil) and modelli (more advanced, usually final, models for presentation to the client)—several of very large scale—and through many preparatory drawings.
Art in Genoa, 1600–1750
The visual arts in Genoa at the beginning of the 17th century included a revolutionary approach to representation that was influenced by followers of Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens. The coexistence and equal importance of native and foreign ideas that had been characteristic of Genoese art since the 14th century allowed for an unprecedented range of stylistic possibilities. Though often intersecting in the city’s churches, palaces, and collections, these diverse styles remained distinctly separate.
Among the artistic choices of the early 17th century, a late mannerism that combined stylization and feeling had the most influence. Beginning in the second decade of the 17th century, artists began to synthesize local, foreign, conservative, and advanced elements into various combinations and contexts. Well-established mannerist design was fused with intense naturalistic observation and charged emotion. Elaborate perspectival schemes became populated with busy and robust narratives. Genre subjects were personalized and elevated through virtuoso handling. Collaboration with Flemish craftsmen resulted in luxury silver goods of unsurpassed intricacy and quality. In their multiple forms, parallel meanings, and equally valid claims to Genoese identity as well as patronage—and in their resemblance to the culture of a modern city––these syntheses marked the emergence and established the terms of a distinctive baroque art.
Around the beginning of the 18th century, art in Genoa underwent significant changes. The increasingly studied interpretation of high baroque that Genoese artists had experienced in Rome as well as activity by leading figures of other schools brought an exaggeration of the naturalistic and visionary aspects found in the Genoese style. An interest in portraiture, inspired by the French court, reemerged as well as an interest in landscape painting; both depicted more conventional types and ideal beauty. The previous extravagance in painting devolved to interior design and the decorative arts, and to provincial situations and traditionally lower art forms, such as wood sculpture and ephemeral decoration. By the mid-18th century, these transformations marked the end of the most consistent and distinctive period of Genoese art.
Around the beginning of the 18th century, art in Genoa underwent significant changes. The increasingly studied interpretation of high baroque that Genoese artists had experienced in Rome as well as activity by leading figures of other schools brought an exaggeration of the naturalistic and visionary aspects found in the Genoese style. An interest in portraiture, inspired by the French court, reemerged as well as an interest in landscape painting; both depicted more conventional types and ideal beauty. The previous extravagance in painting devolved to interior design and the decorative arts, and to provincial situations and traditionally lower art forms, such as wood sculpture and ephemeral decoration. By the mid-18th century, these transformations marked the end of the most consistent and distinctive period of Genoese art.
Exhibition Highlights: A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750
The visual arts in Genoa at the beginning of the 17th century exhibited extraordinary diversity and richness. The city’s enormous wealth enabled its artists and their patrons to create an exuberant expression of the baroque style. A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 is the first comprehensive exhibition of the period in nearly 30 years and the first of this scale in the United States to explore these works.
Painting and Drawing:
The great age of art in Genoa began with Peter Paul Rubens, whose art challenged the current standards and expectations of painting. Although Rubens never lived in Genoa, he visited several times between 1604 and 1607, and completed two altarpieces for the church of the Jesuit rder as well as numerous portraits. Among them are three for Giovan Carlo Doria and close members of his family, one of which is on view in the exhibition: Giovan Carlo Doria (1606, Galleria Nazionale della Liguria a Palazzo Spinola, Genoa). Rubens’ works were fundamental to the development of the baroque, in Genoa and beyond, and became benchmarks for later Genoese painting. Combining the immediacy and power of Caravaggio’s naturalism with breadth and dynamism, the vocabulary of antiquity, and the lessons of the principal Venetians, Rubens sought to capture the experiences of motion, time, and change, with tangible form and authentic feeling.
The city’s artistic climate at the beginning of the 17th century is exemplified by the contrast between Bernardo Castello, the leading artist in Genoa from the 1580s to the 1590s, and Giovanni Battista Paggi. Although stylistically different, Castello and Paggi shared concerns about the intellectual role of artists and the unrestricted import of works of art from other schools. Castello’s approach, while fundamentally more conservative than Paggi’s, was filled with narrative imagination, engaging incident, and increasingly classical dress, as depicted in Christ Healing the Centurion’s Servant (c. 1590, Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy J. Younger), one of his largest existing drawings.
Paggi attempted to illicit an emotional response in the viewer, as seen in The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1604, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa), a drawn study of his altarpiece of the same subject in the church of Gesù. With the support of leading aristocrat Gian Carlo Doria, Paggi established an accademia del disegno that was frequented by the most promising artists of the new generation. His Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (1604, private collection) depicts the Virgin Mary tending to baby Jesus, who is playing with his cousin John.
Anthony van Dyck’s activity in Genoa was the most distinguished among any of the several Flemish painters in the city, including Jan Wildens, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael, Jan Roos, and Giacomo Legi. His style influenced artists such as Domenico Fiasella, Luciano Borzone, Giovanni Andrea De Ferrari, Giovanni Battista Carlone, and Orazio De Ferrari, who began to create works based upon perception (rather than the rendering of specific detail) and focus on design and articulation, a sober palette, and broad execution in the 1630s.
From his arrival in Genoa in 1623, Van Dyck dominated and redefined the field of portraiture, completing about 100 portraits within a few years. Capitalizing on Rubens’ model, he became the premier portraitist in Genoa, as well as throughout Italy and Europe. Among the first portraits that Van Dyck painted upon his arrival in Italy, and considered the single greatest, was Agostino Pallavicini (c. 1621, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) on view in the exhibition. It marks the first significant appointment of an aristocrat who would commemorate his advances to the most prestigious positions in the republic through a series of elegant portraits.
The first Genoese artist to incorporate Netherlandish themes was Sinibaldo Scorza whose vast graphic output includes some of the earliest Genoese etchings. Scorza favored household pets, local wildlife, and exotic species, including ostriches, lions, and leopards, in his drawings. They are sometimes preparatory studies for paintings of biblical or mythological subjects, but more often autonomous works. Signed and dated, Orpheus Charming the Animals (1621, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) is a magnificent example.
Beginning in the second decade of the century through the third, a younger generation of Genoese painters—principally born in the 1580s—synthesized fashionable individual artistic elements and used them in various combinations and contexts. Well-established mannerist design was fused with intense naturalistic observation and charged emotion. Elaborate perspectival schemes were populated with busy and robust narratives. Genre subjects were personalized and elevated through virtuoso handling.
The effects of the new cultural stimuli in Genoa at the beginning of the 17th century is epitomized by the Genoa-born Bernardo Strozzi. His work is characterized by a rare sense of color and extraordinary brushwork that can be seen in works such as Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra (c. 1618/1620, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1617, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford). Strozzi’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (c. 1620, Worcester Art Museum, MA) shows the influence of Caravaggio’s masterpiece on the same subject for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, in the shaft of light grazing the back wall; the seated figure in the middle ground turned three-quarters with left hand on his chest; the figure leaning over the desk counting the coins; and, at far right, the figure of Christ, whose gesturing right hand hints at which of the men he will choose.
In its complex style, varied sources, and thorough synthesis, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s work epitomizes the Genoese baroque. Castiglione developed a repertory of subjects from Genesis, such as Noah’s Sacrifice after the Deluge (1645/1650, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and ancient sources, as seen in Diogenes Searching for a Man(1635/1640, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), in order to create a lavish grouping of animals and objects. His graphic work features brush and oil on paper in a technique derived from the early Flemish and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and follows a tradition of autonomous drawing originating from Luca Cambiaso, whereas his etchings recall those of Claude Lorrain and Rembrandt. Other works on view are drawings such as Scene from Apuleius’ “Golden Ass” (1630/1635, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York) and Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark (1645/1650, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and etchings that include The Animals Going toward the Ark (1645/1650, National Gallery of Art, Washington) and six renderings of the so-called Large Oriental Heads (all c. 1645/1647, National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Domenico Piola, whose technique is emblematic of the Genoese baroque combined with a classical influence, is represented by both paintings and drawings in the exhibition. Among the graphic works are Virgin and Child with Saint George (c. 1680, The British Museum, London) and Vault with the Immaculate Conception (1683/1684, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa). Other highlights include painted studies for autograph paintings, such as Job and His Sons (1650, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao) and larger fresco projects, such as The Coronation of the Virgin (c. 1695, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa) and The Annunciation (1679, Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa).
Gregorio De Ferrari’s works on canvas stand out for their compositional freedom, movement of the figures, and chromatic range. His art ranks among the highest accomplishments in European painting of the time. Some of the works on view in the exhibition are The Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1690, Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels), a modello for the frescoes in the Dominican church of Santi Giacomo e Filippo, the paintings The Infant Moses with Pharaoh’s Crown (1675/1680, Collezioni d'arte Banca Carige, Genoa) and The Death of Saint Scholastica (c. 1700, Museo Diocesano, Genoa, on deposit from the Abbazia di Santo Stefano), as well as several drawings.
Bartolomeo Guidobono’s lifelong collaboration with his brother, Domenico, in majolica painting is reflected in the delicate drawing and soft color found in his work. By 1590, Bartolomeo became one of the most sought-after painters in the region for both frescoes and altarpieces. He often incorporated exquisite still-life elements and alluring figuration into his compositions, as seen in Flora and Zephyr (c. 1700/1705, private collection). These tendencies are less pronounced in his religious works, such as Lot and His Daughters(1694/1696, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa). He embodies the transition from the grand baroque to an art of greater restraint and modesty.
Sculpture:
Sculpture developed much more slowly than painting did in Genoa through the first half of the 17th century and remained generic in style and largely subservient to architecture. Stoneworkers and craftsmen from Lombardy, particularly the area north of Como, dominated the medium and exerted their control in Genoa. Because of its proximity to Carrara and the quarries of Tuscany, the city served as a center for marble preparation and export to the western Mediterranean.
The French sculptor Pierre Puget transformed local understanding and appreciation of the medium and determined its subsequent course in Genoa. He not only raised Genoese sculpture to the level of its painting but also moved them toward a reciprocal stylistic relation. His plan for the crossing in Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano (1664)—grand scenography based on Bernini’s in Saint Peter’s—would have activated the entire space but was never completed. The only two sculptures realized for the project were radical in their plasticity and dramatic expression: Saint Sebastian (1664/1666, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris), on view in the exhibition, and Blessed Alessandro Sauli (1664/1666, The Cleveland Museum of Art).
Two versions of Puget’s Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, for the Lomellini (1669–1670, Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, Genoa) and Balbi (1666–1670, Chiesa della Concezione, Genoa) families, demonstrate his rich imagination and refined execution. The Lomellini family version, on view in the exhibition, illustrates the complex rhythm, articulation, and fall of light that reflect a greater stability and plasticity of form, as well as new iconographic and figural types. After returning to Marseille, Puget continued to receive commissions from Genoa, including The Abduction of Helen (c. 1685/1686, Detroit Institute of Arts) for the Spinola, on view in the exhibition, as well as the Madonna and Child (1682, Museo di Sant’Agostino, Genoa), later acquired by the Carrega family, in addition to other workshop reductions.
The most significant Genoese sculptor of the period was Filippo Parodi, Puget’s follower. Trained in wood carving, he learned marble carving and developed an aptitude for mythological subjects while in Rome between 1661 and 1667. Representing the epitome of his work is the Bust of Lucretia (1685/1690, The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), which shows the influence of Puget’s sculptural techniques combined with the fluid rhythms, elaborate surfaces, and emotional focus found in the paintings of Piola and Gregorio De Ferrari.
Parodi’s workshop, the first serious alternative to those of the traditional Lombard-Genoese sculptors, ensured that Puget’s basic proposition and Parodi’s elegant idiom became fashionable throughout the region and into Piedmont. Among the sculptors in Parodi’s workshop was Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli, a virtuoso marble carver, whose bust portrait Stefano Durazzo (1677, Casa della Missione e Studio Teologico Brignole-Sale, Genoa) depicts his awareness of contemporary Roman sculpture and his gift for portraiture with its deep cutting and arresting glance.
Other artists in Parodi’s workshop include Francesco Biggi and Bernardo Schiaffino. Biggi often collaborated with Filippo Parodi’s son, Domenico, in an extension of Piola’s style. Schiaffino, whose later work displays greater compositional order and more generalized description, signaling a new, academic tendency in Genoese sculpture, also collaborated with Biggi and Domenico. Biggi’s The She-Wolf with Romulus and Remus (c. 1707, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) and Schiaffino’s Jupiter as the Swan with Helen and Pollux (1707, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) were made for an indoor grotto in the Palazzo Brignole-Sale (1707), alongside illusionistic frescoes and panel paintings—a project that epitomizes the collective nature of Genoese workshops.
Among the magnificent works in silver on view in the exhibition are Giovanni Aelbosca Belga’s Basin and Ewer in Celebration of Giovanni Grimaldi (The Lomellini Basin and Ewer) (basin: 1621, ewer: 1622, both, Victoria and Albert Museum, London). They commemorate the naval victory of Giovanni Grimaldi of Monaco—in support of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan—against the Venetian fleet, on the Po River on May 22, 1431.
Grand Decoration:
At the beginning of the 17th century, Bernardo Castello, Lazzaro Tavarone, and two younger artists, Giovanni and Giovanni Battista Carlone, created many of the city’s fresco paintings. A succession of these projects in the 1630s, marked the transition from the late Cinquecento painters—Castello and Tavarone—to Strozzi, Fiasella, Giovanni Carlone, Andrea Ansaldo, and Gioacchino Assereto. These fresco painters were successful not only in Genoa but also in other cities across the Italian peninsula, as well as abroad.
The Carlone brothers were awarded some of the city’s most prestigious commissions, including the decoration of the vaults of the Gesù and Santissima Annunziata. Three of Giovanni Battista Carlone’s studies for the frescoes in Gesù are on view: The Calling of Saint Peter, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, and The Fall of Simon Magus (all c. 1658, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa).
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio, enjoyed great success in Rome. His style is epitomized by the spectacular ceiling decoration in the Roman church of the Gesù (1672/1685) that is widely regarded as the culmination of the baroque in Rome. The characteristics that distinguish his style point to a distinctly Genoese formation —fluid composition, elastic figures, saturated palette, and a warm luster. All are depicted in works such as The Triumph of the Name of Jesus (c. 1676, Princeton University Art Museum).
At the end of the century, two non-Genoese painters were chosen to decorate the two principal vaults of the Palazzo Ducale. The Emilian Marcantonio Franceschini decorated the ceiling frescoes of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (1702/1704); and from Campania, Francesco Solimena decorated the vault of the Sala del Minor Consiglio (1711–1726/1727), the room in the Palazzo Ducale where the doge and the senators met to conduct affairs of state during the summer. Both projects were destroyed in a fire in 1777. All that remains are the extensive preparatory works, from conventional drawings of every stage of development to presentation models in oil on canvas. On view in the exhibition is a modello for Solimena’s Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios (1711/1713, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples). Franceschini’s success pushed the major decorative projects of the early 18th century toward an academic classicism, a style in which his main collaborator, Giacomo Antonio Boni, established his own reputation.
Other artists involved in fresco decoration included Paolo Gerolamo and Domenico Parodi, as well as Giuseppe Palmieri whose style reflected his additional training in Tuscany. Sebastiano Galeotti, trained in Florence and successful across northern Italy, brought an ornate style to the decoration of Santa Maria Maddalena and the Palazzo Spinola in Genoa.
The direction toward regularity in form and expression was reinforced by Lorenzo De Ferrari, the last of the Genoese school’s great fresco painters. Although he began as an indistinguishable collaborator of his father Gregorio, Lorenzo absorbed the lessons of the academic baroque and its precursors in the Roman school of Annibale Carracci. His principal projects—the secondary domes in the church of the Gesù (1737) and the Galleria Dorata of the Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi (1743/1744)—adhere to Genoese schemes, but his figures reveal a style more systematic in procedure and idealized in appearance than those of any Genoese artist of the period. Two of his preparatory drawings for these projects are on view in the exhibition: Study of an Angel in Flight (c. 1738, National Gallery of Art, Washington) for Gesù and Two Goddesses (Horae) (1742–1744, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) for the Palazzo Carrega Cataldi.
Painting and Drawing:
See paintings at bottom of post below
The great age of art in Genoa began with Peter Paul Rubens, whose art challenged the current standards and expectations of painting. Although Rubens never lived in Genoa, he visited several times between 1604 and 1607, and completed two altarpieces for the church of the Jesuit rder as well as numerous portraits. Among them are three for Giovan Carlo Doria and close members of his family, one of which is on view in the exhibition: Giovan Carlo Doria (1606, Galleria Nazionale della Liguria a Palazzo Spinola, Genoa). Rubens’ works were fundamental to the development of the baroque, in Genoa and beyond, and became benchmarks for later Genoese painting. Combining the immediacy and power of Caravaggio’s naturalism with breadth and dynamism, the vocabulary of antiquity, and the lessons of the principal Venetians, Rubens sought to capture the experiences of motion, time, and change, with tangible form and authentic feeling.
The city’s artistic climate at the beginning of the 17th century is exemplified by the contrast between Bernardo Castello, the leading artist in Genoa from the 1580s to the 1590s, and Giovanni Battista Paggi. Although stylistically different, Castello and Paggi shared concerns about the intellectual role of artists and the unrestricted import of works of art from other schools. Castello’s approach, while fundamentally more conservative than Paggi’s, was filled with narrative imagination, engaging incident, and increasingly classical dress, as depicted in Christ Healing the Centurion’s Servant (c. 1590, Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy J. Younger), one of his largest existing drawings.
Paggi attempted to illicit an emotional response in the viewer, as seen in The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1604, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa), a drawn study of his altarpiece of the same subject in the church of Gesù. With the support of leading aristocrat Gian Carlo Doria, Paggi established an accademia del disegno that was frequented by the most promising artists of the new generation. His Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (1604, private collection) depicts the Virgin Mary tending to baby Jesus, who is playing with his cousin John.
Anthony van Dyck’s activity in Genoa was the most distinguished among any of the several Flemish painters in the city, including Jan Wildens, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael, Jan Roos, and Giacomo Legi. His style influenced artists such as Domenico Fiasella, Luciano Borzone, Giovanni Andrea De Ferrari, Giovanni Battista Carlone, and Orazio De Ferrari, who began to create works based upon perception (rather than the rendering of specific detail) and focus on design and articulation, a sober palette, and broad execution in the 1630s.
From his arrival in Genoa in 1623, Van Dyck dominated and redefined the field of portraiture, completing about 100 portraits within a few years. Capitalizing on Rubens’ model, he became the premier portraitist in Genoa, as well as throughout Italy and Europe. Among the first portraits that Van Dyck painted upon his arrival in Italy, and considered the single greatest, was Agostino Pallavicini (c. 1621, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) on view in the exhibition. It marks the first significant appointment of an aristocrat who would commemorate his advances to the most prestigious positions in the republic through a series of elegant portraits.
The first Genoese artist to incorporate Netherlandish themes was Sinibaldo Scorza whose vast graphic output includes some of the earliest Genoese etchings. Scorza favored household pets, local wildlife, and exotic species, including ostriches, lions, and leopards, in his drawings. They are sometimes preparatory studies for paintings of biblical or mythological subjects, but more often autonomous works. Signed and dated, Orpheus Charming the Animals (1621, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) is a magnificent example.
Beginning in the second decade of the century through the third, a younger generation of Genoese painters—principally born in the 1580s—synthesized fashionable individual artistic elements and used them in various combinations and contexts. Well-established mannerist design was fused with intense naturalistic observation and charged emotion. Elaborate perspectival schemes were populated with busy and robust narratives. Genre subjects were personalized and elevated through virtuoso handling.
The effects of the new cultural stimuli in Genoa at the beginning of the 17th century is epitomized by the Genoa-born Bernardo Strozzi. His work is characterized by a rare sense of color and extraordinary brushwork that can be seen in works such as Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra (c. 1618/1620, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1617, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford). Strozzi’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (c. 1620, Worcester Art Museum, MA) shows the influence of Caravaggio’s masterpiece on the same subject for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, in the shaft of light grazing the back wall; the seated figure in the middle ground turned three-quarters with left hand on his chest; the figure leaning over the desk counting the coins; and, at far right, the figure of Christ, whose gesturing right hand hints at which of the men he will choose.
In its complex style, varied sources, and thorough synthesis, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s work epitomizes the Genoese baroque. Castiglione developed a repertory of subjects from Genesis, such as Noah’s Sacrifice after the Deluge (1645/1650, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and ancient sources, as seen in Diogenes Searching for a Man(1635/1640, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), in order to create a lavish grouping of animals and objects. His graphic work features brush and oil on paper in a technique derived from the early Flemish and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and follows a tradition of autonomous drawing originating from Luca Cambiaso, whereas his etchings recall those of Claude Lorrain and Rembrandt. Other works on view are drawings such as Scene from Apuleius’ “Golden Ass” (1630/1635, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York) and Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark (1645/1650, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and etchings that include The Animals Going toward the Ark (1645/1650, National Gallery of Art, Washington) and six renderings of the so-called Large Oriental Heads (all c. 1645/1647, National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Domenico Piola, whose technique is emblematic of the Genoese baroque combined with a classical influence, is represented by both paintings and drawings in the exhibition. Among the graphic works are Virgin and Child with Saint George (c. 1680, The British Museum, London) and Vault with the Immaculate Conception (1683/1684, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa). Other highlights include painted studies for autograph paintings, such as Job and His Sons (1650, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao) and larger fresco projects, such as The Coronation of the Virgin (c. 1695, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa) and The Annunciation (1679, Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa).
Gregorio De Ferrari’s works on canvas stand out for their compositional freedom, movement of the figures, and chromatic range. His art ranks among the highest accomplishments in European painting of the time. Some of the works on view in the exhibition are The Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1690, Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels), a modello for the frescoes in the Dominican church of Santi Giacomo e Filippo, the paintings The Infant Moses with Pharaoh’s Crown (1675/1680, Collezioni d'arte Banca Carige, Genoa) and The Death of Saint Scholastica (c. 1700, Museo Diocesano, Genoa, on deposit from the Abbazia di Santo Stefano), as well as several drawings.
Bartolomeo Guidobono’s lifelong collaboration with his brother, Domenico, in majolica painting is reflected in the delicate drawing and soft color found in his work. By 1590, Bartolomeo became one of the most sought-after painters in the region for both frescoes and altarpieces. He often incorporated exquisite still-life elements and alluring figuration into his compositions, as seen in Flora and Zephyr (c. 1700/1705, private collection). These tendencies are less pronounced in his religious works, such as Lot and His Daughters(1694/1696, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa). He embodies the transition from the grand baroque to an art of greater restraint and modesty.
Sculpture:
Sculpture developed much more slowly than painting did in Genoa through the first half of the 17th century and remained generic in style and largely subservient to architecture. Stoneworkers and craftsmen from Lombardy, particularly the area north of Como, dominated the medium and exerted their control in Genoa. Because of its proximity to Carrara and the quarries of Tuscany, the city served as a center for marble preparation and export to the western Mediterranean.
The French sculptor Pierre Puget transformed local understanding and appreciation of the medium and determined its subsequent course in Genoa. He not only raised Genoese sculpture to the level of its painting but also moved them toward a reciprocal stylistic relation. His plan for the crossing in Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano (1664)—grand scenography based on Bernini’s in Saint Peter’s—would have activated the entire space but was never completed. The only two sculptures realized for the project were radical in their plasticity and dramatic expression: Saint Sebastian (1664/1666, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris), on view in the exhibition, and Blessed Alessandro Sauli (1664/1666, The Cleveland Museum of Art).
Two versions of Puget’s Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, for the Lomellini (1669–1670, Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, Genoa) and Balbi (1666–1670, Chiesa della Concezione, Genoa) families, demonstrate his rich imagination and refined execution. The Lomellini family version, on view in the exhibition, illustrates the complex rhythm, articulation, and fall of light that reflect a greater stability and plasticity of form, as well as new iconographic and figural types. After returning to Marseille, Puget continued to receive commissions from Genoa, including The Abduction of Helen (c. 1685/1686, Detroit Institute of Arts) for the Spinola, on view in the exhibition, as well as the Madonna and Child (1682, Museo di Sant’Agostino, Genoa), later acquired by the Carrega family, in addition to other workshop reductions.
The most significant Genoese sculptor of the period was Filippo Parodi, Puget’s follower. Trained in wood carving, he learned marble carving and developed an aptitude for mythological subjects while in Rome between 1661 and 1667. Representing the epitome of his work is the Bust of Lucretia (1685/1690, The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), which shows the influence of Puget’s sculptural techniques combined with the fluid rhythms, elaborate surfaces, and emotional focus found in the paintings of Piola and Gregorio De Ferrari.
Parodi’s workshop, the first serious alternative to those of the traditional Lombard-Genoese sculptors, ensured that Puget’s basic proposition and Parodi’s elegant idiom became fashionable throughout the region and into Piedmont. Among the sculptors in Parodi’s workshop was Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli, a virtuoso marble carver, whose bust portrait Stefano Durazzo (1677, Casa della Missione e Studio Teologico Brignole-Sale, Genoa) depicts his awareness of contemporary Roman sculpture and his gift for portraiture with its deep cutting and arresting glance.
Other artists in Parodi’s workshop include Francesco Biggi and Bernardo Schiaffino. Biggi often collaborated with Filippo Parodi’s son, Domenico, in an extension of Piola’s style. Schiaffino, whose later work displays greater compositional order and more generalized description, signaling a new, academic tendency in Genoese sculpture, also collaborated with Biggi and Domenico. Biggi’s The She-Wolf with Romulus and Remus (c. 1707, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) and Schiaffino’s Jupiter as the Swan with Helen and Pollux (1707, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) were made for an indoor grotto in the Palazzo Brignole-Sale (1707), alongside illusionistic frescoes and panel paintings—a project that epitomizes the collective nature of Genoese workshops.
Among the magnificent works in silver on view in the exhibition are Giovanni Aelbosca Belga’s Basin and Ewer in Celebration of Giovanni Grimaldi (The Lomellini Basin and Ewer) (basin: 1621, ewer: 1622, both, Victoria and Albert Museum, London). They commemorate the naval victory of Giovanni Grimaldi of Monaco—in support of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan—against the Venetian fleet, on the Po River on May 22, 1431.
Grand Decoration:
At the beginning of the 17th century, Bernardo Castello, Lazzaro Tavarone, and two younger artists, Giovanni and Giovanni Battista Carlone, created many of the city’s fresco paintings. A succession of these projects in the 1630s, marked the transition from the late Cinquecento painters—Castello and Tavarone—to Strozzi, Fiasella, Giovanni Carlone, Andrea Ansaldo, and Gioacchino Assereto. These fresco painters were successful not only in Genoa but also in other cities across the Italian peninsula, as well as abroad.
The Carlone brothers were awarded some of the city’s most prestigious commissions, including the decoration of the vaults of the Gesù and Santissima Annunziata. Three of Giovanni Battista Carlone’s studies for the frescoes in Gesù are on view: The Calling of Saint Peter, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, and The Fall of Simon Magus (all c. 1658, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa).
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio, enjoyed great success in Rome. His style is epitomized by the spectacular ceiling decoration in the Roman church of the Gesù (1672/1685) that is widely regarded as the culmination of the baroque in Rome. The characteristics that distinguish his style point to a distinctly Genoese formation —fluid composition, elastic figures, saturated palette, and a warm luster. All are depicted in works such as The Triumph of the Name of Jesus (c. 1676, Princeton University Art Museum).
At the end of the century, two non-Genoese painters were chosen to decorate the two principal vaults of the Palazzo Ducale. The Emilian Marcantonio Franceschini decorated the ceiling frescoes of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (1702/1704); and from Campania, Francesco Solimena decorated the vault of the Sala del Minor Consiglio (1711–1726/1727), the room in the Palazzo Ducale where the doge and the senators met to conduct affairs of state during the summer. Both projects were destroyed in a fire in 1777. All that remains are the extensive preparatory works, from conventional drawings of every stage of development to presentation models in oil on canvas. On view in the exhibition is a modello for Solimena’s Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios (1711/1713, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples). Franceschini’s success pushed the major decorative projects of the early 18th century toward an academic classicism, a style in which his main collaborator, Giacomo Antonio Boni, established his own reputation.
Other artists involved in fresco decoration included Paolo Gerolamo and Domenico Parodi, as well as Giuseppe Palmieri whose style reflected his additional training in Tuscany. Sebastiano Galeotti, trained in Florence and successful across northern Italy, brought an ornate style to the decoration of Santa Maria Maddalena and the Palazzo Spinola in Genoa.
The direction toward regularity in form and expression was reinforced by Lorenzo De Ferrari, the last of the Genoese school’s great fresco painters. Although he began as an indistinguishable collaborator of his father Gregorio, Lorenzo absorbed the lessons of the academic baroque and its precursors in the Roman school of Annibale Carracci. His principal projects—the secondary domes in the church of the Gesù (1737) and the Galleria Dorata of the Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi (1743/1744)—adhere to Genoese schemes, but his figures reveal a style more systematic in procedure and idealized in appearance than those of any Genoese artist of the period. Two of his preparatory drawings for these projects are on view in the exhibition: Study of an Angel in Flight (c. 1738, National Gallery of Art, Washington) for Gesù and Two Goddesses (Horae) (1742–1744, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) for the Palazzo Carrega Cataldi.
Exhibition Catalog
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The exhibition in Washington is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated, 384-page catalog made possible by the Robert Lehman Foundation, the Wolfgang Ratjen Foundation, Liechtenstein, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Produced and published by the National Gallery of Art in association with Princeton University Press, the book consists of four essays by the leading experts and exhibition curators—Bober, Boccardo, and Boggero—as well as Peter M. Lukehart, associate dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and Andrea Zanini, associate professor of economic history at the University of Genoa. Also featured are ten section introductions that provide a synthetic history of the period’s art, followed by in-depth entries for individual works. This catalog is the first comprehensive study of the Genoese baroque in English and the most current in any language.
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Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio
The Triumph of the Name of Jesus, c. 1676
oil on paper, laid down on canvas
overall: 163 x 111 cm (64 3/16 x 43 11/16 in.)
framed: 175.9 x 123.5 x 6 cm (69 1/4 x 48 5/8 x 2 3/8 in.)
Princeton University Art Museum, Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund and Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund
Princeton University Art Museum / Art Resource, NY![]()
Aurelio Lomi
The Stoning of Saint Stephen, c. 1602
pen and ink with oil over chalk on four sheets of paper
sheet: 94.5 x 78 cm (37 3/16 x 30 11/16 in.)
framed: 106.5 x 86.5 x 5.5 cm (41 15/16 x 34 1/16 x 2 3/16 in.)
Courtesy of Giacometti Old Master Paintings![]()
- Alessandro Magnasco
Monks Warming Themselves at the Fire, c. 1725–1730
oil on canvas
overall: 76.5 x 54 cm (30 1/8 x 21 1/4 in.)
Rob Smeets Gallery, Geneva ![]()
- Giovanni Battista Paggi
Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, 1604
oil on canvas
overall: 153 x 112 cm (60 1/4 x 44 1/8 in.)
framed: 170 x 129 cm (66 15/16 x 50 13/16 in.)
Private collection ![]()
- Peter Paul Rubens
Giovan Carlo Doria, 1606
oil on canvas
overall: 265 x 188 cm (104 5/16 x 74 in.)
framed: 293 x 208 x 14 cm (115 3/8 x 81 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Galleria Nazionale della Liguria a Palazzo Spinola, Genoa
Scala / Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY ![]()
Giulio Cesare Procaccini
The Ecstasy of the Magdalen, 1618/1621
oil on canvas
original canvas: 213.8 x 143.6 cm (84 3/16 x 56 1/2 in.)
overall size (lined canvas and stretcher): 216 x 146 cm (85 1/16 x 57 1/2 in.)
framed: 258.1 x 189.6 x 10.8 cm (101 5/8 x 74 5/8 x 4 1/4 in.)
gross weight (painting and frame together): 65.772 kg (145 lb.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent Fund![]()
Simon Vouet
David with the Head of Goliath, 1621
oil on canvas
overall: 123 x 94 cm (48 7/16 x 37 in.)
framed: 146 x 113.2 x 7 cm (57 1/2 x 44 9/16 x 2 3/4 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova![]()
Orazio Gentileschi
Danaë and the Shower of Gold, 1621/1625
oil on canvas
overall: 161.5 x 227.1 cm (63 9/16 x 89 7/16 in.)
framed: 201.3 x 266.4 x 9.5 cm (79 1/4 x 104 7/8 x 3 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program![]()
Bernardo Strozzi
The Cook, c. 1625
oil on canvas
overall: 176 x 186 cm (69 5/16 x 73 1/4 in.)
framed: 193.5 x 211.5 x 8.5 cm (76 3/16 x 83 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova![]()
- Bernardo Strozzi
Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra, c. 1618/1620
oil on canvas
diameter: 72.5 cm (28 9/16 in.)
framed: 96 x 96 x 8.2 cm (37 13/16 x 37 13/16 x 3 1/4 in.)
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Purchased with the assistance of the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, 1969.
Image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford ![]()
- Andrea Ansaldo
Esther before Ahasuerus, c. 1635
oil on canvas
overall: 130 x 120 cm (51 3/16 x 47 1/4 in.)
framed: 160 x 150 x 10 cm (63 x 59 1/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
Private collection ![]()
- Anthony van Dyck
Agostino Pallavicini, c. 1621
oil on canvas
overall: 216.2 x 141 cm (85 1/8 x 55 1/2 in.)
framed: 265.4 x 185.4 x 11.4 cm (104 1/2 x 73 x 4 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program ![]()
- Luciano Borzone
Rosamund Refusing the Cup, 1635/1640
oil on canvas
overall: 160 x 190 cm (63 x 74 13/16 in.)
Aldo Zerbone ![]()
- File name: 5051-096.jpg
Orazio De Ferrari
Ecce Homo, c. 1640/1645
oil on canvas
overall: 95 x 118 cm (37 3/8 x 46 7/16 in.)
© Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano ![]()
- Gioacchino Assereto
The Suicide of Cato, c. 1640
oil on canvas
overall: 203 x 253 cm (79 15/16 x 99 5/8 in.)
framed: 223.3 x 274.5 x 7 cm (87 15/16 x 108 1/16 x 2 3/4 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova ![]()
- Domenico Fiasella
The Impeturbability of Anaxarchus, 1630/1635
oil on canvas
overall: 153 x 189 cm (60 1/4 x 74 7/16 in.)
framed: 155.5 x 191.5 x 4 cm (61 1/4 x 75 3/8 x 1 9/16 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova ![]()
- Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari
The Drunkenness of Noah, 1630/1640
oil on canvas
overall: 124 x 149 cm (48 13/16 x 58 11/16 in.)
framed: 145 x 169 x 12 cm (57 1/16 x 66 9/16 x 4 3/4 in.)
Museo dell'Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa
Photo by Luigino Visconti ![]()
Sinibaldo Scorza
The Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas, c. 1625/1630
oil on canvas
overall: 46 x 71 cm (18 1/8 x 27 15/16 in.)
framed: 62 x 88 x 6.5 cm (24 7/16 x 34 5/8 x 2 9/16 in.)
Private collection![]()
- Cornelis de Wael
The Departure of the Prodigal Son, 1630/1635
oil on canvas
overall: 57 x 86 cm (22 7/16 x 33 7/8 in.)
framed: 70 x 100 cm (27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in.)
Private collection ![]()
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- Cornelis de Wael
The Prodigal Son Wasting His Substance, 1630/1635
oil on canvas
overall: 57 x 86 cm (22 7/16 x 33 7/8 in.)
framed: 70 x 100 cm (27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in.)
Private collection ![]()
- Cornelis de Wael
The Prodigal Son Expelled from the Tavern, 1630/1635
oil on canvas
overall: 57 x 86 cm (22 7/16 x 33 7/8 in.)
framed: 70 x 100 cm (27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in.)
Private collection ![]()
- Cornelis de Wael
The Prodigal Son Amid the Swine, 1630/1635
oil on canvas
overall: 57 x 86 cm (22 7/16 x 33 7/8 in.)
framed: 70 x 100 cm (27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in.)
Private collection ![]()
- Giacomo Legi
The Larder, 1630/1640
oil on canvas
overall: 149 x 188 cm (58 11/16 x 74 in.)
framed: 176 x 219 x 10 cm (69 5/16 x 86 1/4 x 3 15/16 in.)
Galerie Canesso, Paris ![]()
- Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Diogenes Searching for a Man, 1635/1640
oil on canvas
overall: 97 x 145 cm (38 3/16 x 57 1/16 in.)
framed: 111.7 x 161 x 5.2 cm (44 x 63 3/8 x 2 1/16 in.)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Image © Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, NY ![]()
- Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Noah's Sacrifice after the Deluge, 1645/1650
oil on canvas
overall: 140.3 x 193.7 cm (55 1/4 x 76 1/4 in.)
framed: 167.6 x 218.4 x 8.9 cm (66 x 86 x 3 1/2 in.)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the Ahmanson Foundation ![]()
Anton Maria Vassallo
The Larder, c. 1648
oil on canvas
overall: 229.2 x 163.2 cm (90 1/4 x 64 1/4 in.)
framed: 257.8 x 192.4 x 10.1 cm (101 1/2 x 75 3/4 x 4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection![]()
Antonio Travi
Shore with Fishermen and Ruined Tower, 1650/1655
oil on canvas
overall: 125 x 177 cm (49 3/16 x 69 11/16 in.)
framed: 151 x 203 x 9 cm (59 7/16 x 79 15/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
Galerie Canesso, Paris
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1645
oil on canvas
overall: 398 x 218 cm (156 11/16 x 85 13/16 in.)
Fondazione Spinola, Chiesa di San Luca, Genoa![]()
- Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Virgin and Child in Glory with an Angel, 1650/1655
oil on paper, laid down on canvas
sheet: 53.5 x 39.2 cm (21 1/16 x 15 7/16 in.)
framed: 60.9 x 46.3 x 2.54 cm (24 x 18 1/4 x 1 in.)
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Suida-Manning Collection ![]()
- Valerio Castello
The Marriage of the Virgin, 1645/1650
oil on canvas
overall: 95.5 x 122.5 cm (37 5/8 x 48 1/4 in.)
framed: 119 x 146.5 cm (46 7/8 x 57 11/16 in.)
Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa
With the Permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attivita Culturali - Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola-Genova ![]()
- Valerio Castello
Diana and Actaeon with Pan and Syrinx, 1650/1655
oil on canvas
overall: 165.1 x 251.5 cm (65 x 99 in.)
framed: 183.5 x 275 x 6.4 cm (72 1/4 x 108 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.)
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, Gift of R. H. Norton, 49.3 ![]()
- Bartolomeo Biscaino
The Adoration of the Magi, 1650/1655
oil on canvas
overall: 124 x 173 cm (48 13/16 x 68 1/8 in.)
Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola ![]()
- Domenico Piola
Job and His Sons, 1650
oil on canvas
overall: 175.5 x 220 cm (69 1/8 x 86 5/8 in.)
framed: 213.1 x 257.3 x 9.7 cm (83 7/8 x 101 5/16 x 3 13/16 in.)
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
© Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao ![]()
Domenico Piola
The Annunciation, 1679
oil on canvas
overall: 345 x 200 cm (135 13/16 x 78 3/4 in.)
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa
Scala / Art Resource, NY![]()
Domenico Piola and Stefano Camogli
Putto with a Vase of Flowers (Allegory of Spring and Summer), c. 1685/1690
oil on canvas
overall: 132 x 93 cm (51 15/16 x 36 5/8 in.)
framed: 141 x 104.6 cm (55 1/2 x 41 3/16 in.)
Civica Galleria di Palazzo Rocca, Chiavari, Quadreria P. Torriglia
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Gregorio De Ferrari
The Infant Moses with Pharaoh's Crown, 1675/1680
oil on canvas
overall: 150 x 200 cm (59 1/16 x 78 3/4 in.)
framed: 157 x 207 x 7 cm (61 13/16 x 81 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.)
Collezioni d'Arte Banca Carige, Genoa![]()
- Gregorio De Ferrari
The Death of Saint Scholastica, c. 1700
oil on canvas
overall: 319 x 222 cm (125 9/16 x 87 3/8 in.)
Museo Diocesano, Genoa, on deposit from the Abbazia di Santo Stefano ![]()
Bartolomeo Guidobono
Lot and His Daughters, 1694/1696
oil on canvas
overall: 225 x 164 cm (88 9/16 x 64 9/16 in.)
framed: 255 x 190 x 10 cm (100 3/8 x 74 13/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova
Bernardo Strozzi
The Vision of Saint Dominic (Il Paradiso), 1620–1621
oil on canvas
overall: 177 x 107.5 cm (69 11/16 x 42 5/16 in.)
framed: 194 x 127 x 11.5 cm (76 3/8 x 50 x 4 1/2 in.)
Museo dell'Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa![]()
Giovanni Battista Carlone
The Calling of Saint Peter, c. 1658
oil on canvas
overall: 140 x 127 cm (55 1/8 x 50 in.)
framed: 154 x 132 x 5 cm (60 5/8 x 51 15/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa
With the Permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attivita Culturali - Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola-Genova![]()
Giovanni Battista Carlone
The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, c. 1658
oil on canvas
overall: 145 x 122 cm (57 1/16 x 48 1/16 in.)
framed: 154 x 130 x 5 cm (60 5/8 x 51 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa
With the Permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attivita Culturali - Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola-Genova
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- Giovanni Battista Carlone
The Fall of Simon Magus, c. 1658
oil on canvas
overall: 148 x 126 cm (58 1/4 x 49 5/8 in.)
framed: 154 x 132 x 5 cm (60 5/8 x 51 15/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, Genoa
With the Permission of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attivita Culturali - Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola-Genova ![]()
- Domenico Piola
The Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1695
oil on canvas
overall: 61.5 x 146 cm (24 3/16 x 57 1/2 in.)
framed: 81 x 168 x 6.5 cm (31 7/8 x 66 1/8 x 2 9/16 in.)
Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa
© Musei di Strada Nuova ![]()
Gregorio De Ferrari
The Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1690
oil on canvas
overall: 112.5 x 148.5 cm (44 5/16 x 58 7/16 in.)
Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels
© RMAH, Brussels![]()
Paolo Girolamo Piola
Apollo and Daphne, 1700/1705
oil on canvas
overall: 54 x 78 cm (21 1/4 x 30 11/16 in.)
framed: 73.5 x 102 x 6 cm (28 15/16 x 40 3/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
Private collection, Genoa![]()
Domenico Parodi
Portrait of a Lady with Servant, c. 1715
oil on canvas
overall: 136 x 130 cm (53 9/16 x 51 3/16 in.)
framed: 146 x 140 cm (57 1/2 x 55 1/8 in.)
Goldfinch Fine Arts