Starting from 1686-1687 Gregorio De Ferrari was engaged, with his father-in-law Domenico Piola, in the fresco decoration of the second “noble” floor of Palazzo Rosso, commissioned by Gio. Francesco I Brignole - Sale (1643-1694): starting from the hall, passing through the four rooms to the east up to the south loggia facing the sea, a single and consistent iconographic project is developed which has as its central conceit the linking of Apollo god of the Sun, who with his chariot marks the rhythm of the days, and the owner of the house Brignole - Sale, whose heraldic coat of arms, a rampant lion, is the zodiac symbol of summer, the season of the sun.
The decoration of the hall, created by Gregorio De Ferrari is the fulcrum of this complex figurative system, revolving around the mythical figure of Phaethon, son of Apollo. It bears the coats of arms of the patrons, Brignole and his wife Maria Durazzo in the corners: unfortunately this decoration was destroyed due to the bombings of the second world war. Following this we find the lounges dedicated to the allegories of the Four Seasons, iconographically connected to the general symbolic plan as emblems of the passage of time. In the first two rooms, still the work of De Ferrari, Spring and Summer triumph in the centre of two ceiling vaults framed by stucco work by Giacomo Maria Muttone. In the summer room Cerere, goddess of the harvest, flies next to a putto holding a large bundle of golden ears of wheat, prevails over the winter winds driven by the Aura, while the centre of the composition is again dominated by the figure of Apollo the Sun accompanied by a lion, this time allusive also - as already in the hall - to the sign of the zodiac and therefore to the summer, in an amusing play of references both astrological and dynastic.

Penitent Magdalene

The work, considered one of the artist's first masterpieces as a mature artist, bears the inscription "Canova Roma 1796" on the back. Commissioned by his (Bassanese) friend and administrator Tiberio Roberti (1749-1817), the sculpture was preceded by a drawing of the Bassanese notebook Eb and two “bozzetti” (models), one in raw earth, now in the collections of the Venetian Civic Museums, and one in terracotta, still in the Canovian collection of the Museums of Bassano del Grappa, and from a plaster model, identified with a statue in the Civic Museums of Padua. In April 1794 the sculpture was in progress and was completed if not before the Ascension of 1796, immediately after.
In 1797 Roberti renounced the purchase of the sculpture due to economic difficulties linked to the Napoleonic battles in the Venetian countryside. Francesco Milizia, the Venetian critic, procured a new buyer for Canova in Giovanni Priuli (1763-1801), Venetian national auditor at the Tribunal of the Sacra Rota, who became its “virtual” owner before June 1797, without however taking possession of it. During the  period of the “Direttorio”, the sculpture was purchased for 1000 “zecchini “ (twice what was initially budgeted!) By Jean-François Julliot, a marchand, a man of great wealth obtained from para-military supplies during the Napoleonic campaigns of Italy and Egypt. He was the representative of the Cisalpine Republic in Rome, Juliot brought the Maddalena to Paris, Canova's first work to reach the French capital; it was then sold to Giovanni Battista Sommariva - (1757-1826), a prominent member of the Milanese triumvirate who had  launched the second Cisalpine Republic between 1800 and 1802 - he exhibited it at the Parisian Salon of 1808: it’s appearance was greeted with great enthusiasm by the public, while sparking a critical debate about the artist's choices regarding the boundaries between painting and sculpture and the possible relationship between the two arts. In the penitent Magdalene, in fact, Canova works marble molding the material to its extremelimits, passing from the extreme smoothness of Maddalena's patinated figure to the roughly hewn appearance of the base on which it stands; Furthermore, the gilded bronze insert of the cross, together with the realism of the tears and the flowing hair that the artist treated with wax mixed with sulfur, to create its colour, appears a conscious meditation on the possibility of achieving the same effects in sculpture as in painting. These experimental aspects, combined with the undeniable sensual charm of the work, determined its extraordinary fortune in the romantic age, thanks also to the admiration of it epressed by Stendhal.
Sommariva subsequently transported the work to Milan where it was sold to the Marquis Aguado, in 1839 returning once again in Paris. After the latter's death, it was purchased for 59,000 francs by Raffaele De Ferrari, Duke of Galliera, and placed in his Parisian residence. It then passed to the city of Genoa in 1889 as a legacy of his widow, Maria Brignole - Sale de Ferrari.

1926, tempera on paper, dimensions: cm. 80 x2 00

With resolution of the Prefect Commissioner n. 1102 of 26.08.1926 Giuseppe Mazzoni was commissioned to produce a prospect of Genoa and the Municipalities annexed to it in 1926, for the fee of £. 2,500.

The view of the “Grande Genova” was exhibited in Tripoli in 1927 on the occasion of the 1st Tripoli Fair.

Musical manuscript

In recent years the collections of the Historical Archive have been enriched with documentary material relating to the great violinist, including the score of Carmagnola, the National Anthem and letters, dated between 1831 and 1839.

Among the volumes of religious history preserved in the Municipality's Historical Archive, the Statutes of the Compagnia del Mandiletto, an association founded in Genoa at the end of the fifteenth century with the aim of dedicating itself to the collection and distribution of money to the poor of the city, worth mentioning for the great vitality of the confraternity movement in the “modern” era in Genoa.

Ink on paper, original binding in soft parchment (A.S.C.G., Archivio De Ferrari, inv. 346, ms.272)

The manuscript contains the records of Battista de Luco's commercial activities, a typical example of a mid -level exponent of the Genoese merchant class, active on the routes that connected Genoa with the Aegean Sea and the Atlantic, as far as England. Among the recorded activities, the buying and selling of ostrich feathers, wax and fabrics, which took place in Alexandria, Egypt between June 12 and August 25, 1472, is interesting and curious.

The account book is part of the De Ferrari Family Archive, which was received by the Municipality of Genoa in 1927, together with the Brignole Sale Archive.