Ritual Axe, Cook Islands

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Titolo dell'opera:

Ritual axe

Acquisizione:

Enrico A. D'Albertis 1932

Author/ School/ Dating:

Mangaïa, Cook Islands, second half of the 19th century

Epoca:

XIX - 1891 - 1900

Inventario:

C.D.A.1096

Misure:

Tipo di misura: altezzaxlarghezzaxspessore; Unità di misura: cm; Valore: 41x17x9

Provenienza (nazione):

Isole Cook

Technique and Dimensions:

Coconut fibres

Utilizzo:

Insegna simbolica di rango. La lama di basalto era usata manualmente per uccidere le vittime sacrificali del dio Rongo. Le asce rituali erano considerate un simbolo di divinità e atte a captare e conservare il potere dei nemici uccisi e delle divinità stesse. A fine Ottocento vennero realizzate a fini di lucro. Cerimonie.

Back to Focus:
Polynesia
Descrizione:

The ritual axe represents ‘Tane Mata Ariki’ (‘Tane with a royal face’), the god of craftsmen who, according to tradition, taught the people of Mangaia how to make axes. The flared wooden handle, with a square section base and hollow lower part, is densely engraved and pierced with hourglass, star and ‘K’ geometric motifs. The blade made of black basalt stone is rectangular in shape, with a cut on the shorter side and bevelled longer sides. The blade is attached to a hollow in the handle entirely wrapped with coconut plant fibre, woven to form a decoration. Non-functional ritual axes, with their surfaces completely engraved with geometric and naturalistic motifs, are specific to the island of Mangaia. Before contact with Europeans, axes of this type were equipped with a cylindrical handle and used as insignia of rank. Having fallen into disuse, basalt blades were recovered and in the 19th century the pedestal form was introduced to meet commercial needs. The 19th century constituted a kind of golden age of sculpture for the Cook Islands. Inspired by traditional forms and motifs and aided by metal tools, sculptors produced large quantities of objects to meet the demands of whaling crews.

Loggia delle Rovine - Palazzo Rosso

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Author/ School/ Dating:

Nicolò Codazzi (Napoli, 1642 - Genova, 1693)

Object Type:

affresco

Back to Focus:
The Frescoes of Palazzo Rosso

Nel 1689 il pittore di quadratura Nicolò Codazzi, figlio del più famoso Viviano Codazzi, paesaggista e prospettico di origine lombarda, viene pagato per le architetture dipinte a fresco nella loggia sud del secondo piano nobile di Palazzo Rosso: in questo ambiente le parti di figura, che raccontano il mito di Diana-Luna e del suo amore per il bellissimo Endimione, spettano al genovese Paolo Gerolamo Piola, figlio di Domenico, allora ventitreenne e per questo motivo non presente come voce autonoma nei conti delle spese di cantiere. L’intero progetto decorativo della dimora era in quegli anni diretto proprio da Domenico Piola e anche Codazzi figurava già tra i collaboratori di quest’ultimo per la realizzazione delle “muraglie” – ossia le architetture a trompe l’oeil delle pareti – nella sala dell’Inverno.
Lo spazio della loggia è fantasiosamente trasformato – dalla capacità di mimesis dell’affresco barocco – in un palazzo diroccato, dove elementi architettonici in rovina, intonaci crollati e arcate dirute con mattoni in aggetto sono finti in pittura o concretamente simulati in rilievo grazie a inserti in stucco: in questo scenario di pura illusione è ambientata la favola d’amore della dea della Luna che, secondo il mito, sarebbe scesa ogni notte protetta dalle tenebre a baciare il suo amato pastore Endimione, reso immortale da Giove ma condannato a un sonno eterno.
Questa sala era stata in origine concepita come “galleria” chiusa e aveva arcate più basse, ornate da lunette affrescate e finestre dai decori rocaille; l’aspetto di loggia aperta sulla città che ha oggi questo ambiente, dal quale si gode un bellissimo panorama sul centro medioevale e sul mare, data infatti al restauro degli anni cinquanta del secolo scorso, quando si ritenne erroneamente non autentico, in un palazzo del Seicento, un ambiente il cui gusto anticipava già così manifestamente il Settecento.
La favola di Diana-Luna viene a corrispondere – spazialmente e simbolicamente – a quella di Apollo-Sole del salone centrale, inserendosi nel generale progetto di cosmologia celebrativa della casata Brignole - Sale; l’invenzione dell’architettura in rovina, invece, può essere credibilmente messa in rapporto con il ricordo dell’aspetto che Genova dovette avere dopo il tragico bombardamento da parte della flotta francese nel 1684, quando la città, cannoneggiata per undici giorni, rimase ferma nel proposito di difendere a tutti i costi la propria libertà.

Diana (part. della Loggia delle Rovine)

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Author/ School/ Dating:

Nicolò Codazzi (Napoli, 1642 - Genova, 1693)

Back to Focus:
The Frescoes of Palazzo Rosso
Museo dei Capuccini - Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Genova

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Author/ School/ Dating:

Museo dei Capuccini - Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Genova

Back to Focus:
Church of Santissima Annunziata di Portoria – Santa Caterina da Genova
Museo dei Capuccini - Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Genova

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Author/ School/ Dating:

Museo dei Capuccini - Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Genova

Back to Focus:
The Museum of the Capuchin friars
The Turboship Andrea Doria

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Author/ School/ Dating:

The Turboship "Andrea Doria"

Object Type:

Museum section

Back to Focus:
Fourth floor

 

The exhibition is dedicated to the “Turbonave” Andrea Doria, its construction, its history, the shipwreck of July 26, 1956 and the discussion that followed on the responsibilities of the collision. Through reconstructions of the ship's environments and a part of the promenade deck (inclined at 30°), visitors are able to follow the escape routes that passengers and crew had to take to escape the tragedy. The exhibit includes stories, photos and interviews and a suggestive reconstruction of the dynamics of the accident that caused the shipwreck.

 

The Historical Archive of the Municipality of Genoa

The Historical Archive of the Municipality of Genoa, based in Palazzo Ducale, preserves the documents relating to the administration of the city between the 15th and mid-20th centuries and holds a collection of manuscripts dating to the 14th–19th centuries.
The archive houses the permanent exhibition titled Amole, libbre, cannelle, dedicated to the historical collection of weights and units of measurement which were used in the city before the final introduction of the metric system in 1805.

 

Top Ten

The oldest part of the collection is made up of the funds of the Magistracies responsible under the Republic of Genoa for the administration and provision of the city: the Fathers of the Municipality, the Censors, the Abundance and the Provisori del vino.

Furthermore, a collection of manuscripts relating to the history of Genoa (XV-XVIII), the documents of the Capitanato di Voltri (XVI-XVIII), a curious collection of autographs (XVI-XX), the archives of the Municipalities annexed to Genoa in 1926, the archives of the Brignole Sale and De Ferrari families.

DocSAI Center

The Documentation Center for History, Art and Image (DOCSAI) is not widely known, but it is a place where visitors can discover and examine the history of our city and region through thousands of images and  books (both modern and precious antique modern volumes).

It is a public place of cultural interest which includes: the Topographic and Cartographic Collection, the Photographic Archive and the Art History Library of the Municipality of Genoa.

It is open to the public by appointment to offer more focused consultations or guided tour. It is located in Palazzo Rosso Annexes. The access to the building is located in Via ai Quattro Canti di san Francesco, where a typically late-medieval entrance and an exceptional wooden coffered ceiling of the mid-fifteenth century, with its original polychrome painting decoration, will receive the visitors who enter the Art History Library, the most important of Liguria. 

On the upper floor there are the Topographic and Cartographic Collections: 8.000 images, including prints, watercolors, paintings and projects. In the end, the Photographic Archive includes more than 220.000 images representing the artistic, economic and social life in Genoa from the second half of the nineteenth century to the '60s.

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To understand the vastness and heterogeneity of the works preserved at the Documentation Center for History, Art and the Image of Genoa, it is enough to select a few particularly important pieces from those of the Topographical Collection and the DocSAI Photographic Archive .

For example, there are watercolours offering views of the city or designs for an imagined metropolis that was never realized. And, of course, no shortage of scenes from everyday life, rare testimony of how customs in Liguria have changed in the last century as well as many photographs that depict places that have now disappeared or have undergone radical changes.

Musei di Genova MEI National Museum of Italian Emigration

Notice

 

 

THE MUSEUM IS OPEN!

Come and visit us soon

Notice

 

 

THE MUSEUM IS OPEN!

Come and visit us soon

MEI National Museum of Italian Emigration

The MEI - National Museum of Italian Emigration, housed in the Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè, lies onto 3 floors divided into 16 areas where it is possible to retrace many stories of Italian migration, from the Unification of Italy (and even before) to the present. The museum is in close relationship with Mu.MA  - Maritime and Migrations Museum and, in particular, with the nearby Galata Maritime Museum, which houses the section on transoceanic voyages "Memoria e Migrazioni" (Memory and Migrations) and the section on immigration, "Italiano anch'io".

Genoa is a city with a strong link to emigration: it was from here that millions of Italians left for the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. 

The life stories of migrants are told through first-hand sources such as diaries, letters, photographs,  newspapers and archival documents. 

It is an empathetic and interactive museum, where you can "do experience" . See, hear, learn and get involed in the scenic setting of one of the city's oldest medieval buildings, which originally provided hospitality to pilgrims.

 

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Musei di Genova Diocesan Museum

Diocesan Museum

Nestled between the St. Lorenzo Cathedral and Palazzo Ducale, the Diocesan Museum lies in the heart of Genoa: with respect to major thorough fares it is in a side street, via Tommaso Reggio. Entering the Museum you discover an unexpected and surprising building containing precious works of art: a medieval cloister full of frescoes and built on an ancient Roman domus; a wealth of paintings and sculptures, fabrics, illuminated manuscripts, silver, reliquaries, musical instruments and an initial archaeological section, that tell the artistic history of the city.

The building that houses the museum has a complex structure, the result of the numerous developments that have taken place over time: erected as the residence of the Canons of the Cathedral in the second half of the 12th century, in an area which had been used as settlements in Roman times, its many additions have left visible the changes of the following centuries giving us an extremely interesting architectural artefact, in itself a good reason to visit.

A visit to museum follows a chronological sequence over four floors, interspersed with themed rooms, among which, and genuinly unique, is that dedicated to the display of the sixteenth-century The Passion Canvases (depicted on a fabric which is the precursor to jeans).

The collection of the Diocesan Museum is composed primarily of works belonging to churches of the diocese: only a small part has been received through donations or belongs directly to the Museum, which is therefore in charge of their conservation, protection and enhancement.

 

Top Ten

In the rich museum collection there are works that tell not only the story of how they were created, by whom and for what purpose, that is the data traditionally linked to the understanding of a work of art, but they also allow us see the continuous thread that persists between the distant past and our present.

The Museum includes a unique room that houses The Passion Canvases, on loan from the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism: fourteen large linen cloths dyed with indigo and bearing white lead paintings, they formed an ephemeral apparatus for Week Holy and depict scenes from the Passion of Christ. They are the work of artists from different eras, starting with sixteenth-century masters who were inspired by Dürer's engravings. The material is considered a precursor of the jeans fabric, which, as is well known, was used for the first time in Genoa and owes its name to the city.

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