3296

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 150; Diametro: 106

legno-gesso-cartapesta

The use of celestial globes responded to two orders of problems: aiding navigation and teaching astronomy. With the 17th-century Dutch globes, the celestial sphere becomes an occasion for “entertainment” rather than erudition. On the basis of the position of the stars, ordered according to different magnitudes, the constellations represented with mythological drawings are arranged: from the warrior Orion, to Sagittarius, to the Eagle, to Gemini; the globe thus becomes the “theater of the sky.” In this wooden celestial globe, the stars are indicated in Latin, Greek and Arabic-a tribute to the mother tongue of astronomy.

3487

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 53,68; Larghezza: 47,63; Varie: Misure cornice in cm 68, 68

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Esposizione universale - New York - 1939

The portrait of Christopher Columbus, painted by Ridolfo, son of Domenico Bigordi known as il Ghirlandaio (1483-1561), is the image that, over time, has established itself in the collective imagination as the face of the Navigator. The painting was found around the middle of the 19th century on the antiques market in Florence by the Genoese artist Giambattista Cevasco. There has been much controversy over the painting over the past decades. In particular, this portrait was considered to be very different from the two traditional Colombian iconographic strands, which are based on the one hand on the painting in the Collezione Gioviana (Musei Civici, Como) and on the other on Sebastiano dal Piombo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). On this basis, the attribution to Ridolfo has also been contested, shifting its realisation to the second half of the 16th century, when the painter was no longer active. Detailed examination of the figure reveals, however, many similarities with the painting and portrait techniques of Ghirlandaio's son and as such lattribution was confirmed by B. Berenson in 1932, although the work, as can be seen from the authoritative The Dictionary of Art, 1996, bibliography edited by Andrea Muzzi, vol. XII, pp. 556/557, was not included in the painter's curriculum. It should be considered that, starting in the first quarter of the 16th century, certain common formal canons (the black cloth robe, the white shirt, the face turned to the left) became established in the portraiture of famous people. It is possible that Ridolfo - also basing himself on the literary description in Ferdinando Colombo's Historie (the bright complexion, the prematurely bleached hair) - thus derived a fantasy portrait, but one that was able to be appreciated for its formal qualities. The letters and position of the inscription have been compared to that of the portrait of Cristofano dell'Altissimo, kept in the Galleria Gioviana in Como, which is titled 'CRISTO:VS COLOMBO' in full. The painting depicts Christopher Columbus in the foreground.

2957

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 45; Larghezza: 35

acciaio- incisione

ex museid

The corselet is a type of armour, notably lighter than ordinary armour and usually without shoulder straps or hips, which protected mainly the chest and belly, in use until the 17th century. Most of the pieces of armour preserved in the Musei del Mare di Genova were intended for the personal defence of soldiers embarked on the galleys of the Republic. Lightness and strength were required of them: they had to withstand the blow of an arquebus, the strike of a lance or the arrow of a crossbow. The equipment was reduced to a minimum: the breastplate and the dorsal, bound on the shoulders by leather laces and held together by a wide leather belt. To protect the head, the morion or borgognotta.

PB 2201

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 121; Larghezza: 94

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Utrecht, Caravaggio e l'Europa - Utrecht, Central Museum - 14/12/2018 a 24/03/2019<br>L'ultimo Caravaggio. Eredi e nuovi maestri - Milano, Gallerie d'Italia - 30/11/2017 - 08/04/2018<br>CARAVAGGIO and His Time Friends, Rivals and Enemies - Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art - 01/03/2016 - 12/06/2016<br>Caravaggio y los peintores del Norte - Madrid - 2016<br>Caravaggio and his follower in Rome - Fort Worth, Texas, Kimbell Art Museum - 21/10/2011 - 05/02/2012<br>Simon Vouet - Nantes- Besançon - 2009<br>Van Dyck a Genova. Grande pittura e collezionismo - Genova - 1997<br>Vouet - Parigi - 1991<br>Valentin - Parigi - 1974

Simon Vouet, French “Caravaggist” painter, must have painted this beautiful canvas between 1620 and 1622, the years in which his stay in Genoa is recorded and probably more specifically, during the summer of 1621, when he was a guest in the villa of Sampierdarena of the brothers Marcantonio and Gio. Carlo Doria. They were among the most prominent figures of the city both from a financial point of view and also in terms of patronage of the arts. Vouet painted various works, including in all probability, this David with the head of Goliath which, twinned with a Giuditta (still in a private collection), was then transferred to the town residence of Gio. Carlo in Vico del Gelsomino, now Via David Chiossone. The inventory of the Doria, and the documents relating to the subsequent hereditary passages of the family assets, gives us a glimpse of a collection of extraordinary works of art: Gio. Carlo also owned a Saint Catherine by Vouet , today in a private collection, a San Sebastiano being treated by a group of pious women, today in the Condorelli collection, and a Portrait of his client, now in the Louvre. The painting depicts David holding the head of Goliath, showing a moment when the boy, turning his gaze to a point outside the painting, and holding the giant's huge head in his left hand, seems to reflect on the enormity of his achievement, accomplished with the help of God. The refined colour combinations, the impalpable movement suggested by the use of light, the introspective air, the realism, the rigorous compositional choices are a severe reinterpretation of Caravaggio, so much so that this David was called "la plus caravagesque de toutes ses oeuvres connues". As in the best works of Merisi, the other protagonist of the composition is light. From outside the frame, it bathes almost the entire figure of David, who appears, almost taken unawares by this aurora and turning his gaze towards the light, his movement is frozen in an ecstatic pose, his lips parted, almost as if in the grip of a divine vision. The work passed to the Cambiaso family in the 18th century, and was purchased for Palazzo Bianco in 1923. The painting depicts David holding Goliath's head.

PR 51

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 286; Larghezza: 198

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Cento opere di Van Dick - Genova - 1955<br>Van Dyck a Genova. Grande pittura e collezionismo. - Genova - 1997<br>Van Dyck - Anversa - 1999

The portrait of Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale, together with that of his wife Paolina Adorno, constitute one of the rare examples of en pendant portraits by Van Dyck that still remain together. They are also the only ones among the fifty from Van Dyck's Genoese period for which the specific payment recorded in the account books of the Brignole-Sale family in 1627 is preserved: with a third painting, depicting Geronima Sale Brignole with her daughter Aurelia, his mother and sister respectively, a total of 747 lire was paid to the painter in 1627-the final year of his Genoese sojourn. These are probably the last paintings executed by the Flemish artist in Genoa, the city where he arrived in 1621 as Rubens' “best disciple,” soon enjoying extraordinary success with the new city nobility, who, well aware of the even symbolic value of the images and the celebratory message they conveyed, competed to be portrayed by the young artist. They have always belonged to the family picture gallery and are the only ones to have remained in the residence of the family for whom they were painted. Ridolfo, son of the effigy couple, brought them to the Brignole-Sale family's new residence, Palazzo Rosso, after the mid-seventeenth century, where they remain today. In 1687 they were bought back by the cadet Gio. Francesco I, at a time when, his brother having died without male descendants, they would have ended up in foreign hands. The portrait of Paolina Adorno is the largest of the work by Van Dyck during his years in Genoa depicting a single female figure and follows a compositional scheme frequenty adopted by the artist during his career. In it appears, almost as a sort of compendium, all of typical stylistic features of his work: the presentation of a figure in both full and three-quarter length; the gaze turned towards the viewer; the setting in a space characterized by imposing columns, loggias and sumptuous red drapes; the presence of animals and, above all, magnificent attire such as the dress in which Paolina is depicted,rendered mimetically with a subtle blue colour to depict the fabric and with a more robust material, in yellow and white paste, to evoke the gold of the embroidery. Here Paolina is portrayed in her twenties, at the very height of her youth, but in the composition there is no lack of elements which, in addition to the merely decorative role, also contribute an allegorical element, for example looking at the parrot – a detail in which the collaboration of Jan Roos has been suggested – the bird’s feathers have fallen on the pillow, while the open rose, in the lady’s right hand is in full bloom. Both represent the transience of beauty which, like the rose, is destined to fade.

PR 20

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 176; Larghezza: 185

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Pittori genovesi a Genova nel '600 e nel '700 - Genova - 1969<br>Bernardo Strozzi - Genova - 1995<br>La cucina italiana. Cuoche a confronto - Genova - 2015

Certainly one of the best-known works in the Strada Nuova Museums and in 17th-century Genoese painting itself, this canvas, internationally known as Strozzi's “La cuoca” (The Cook), depicts a kitchen maid plucking a goose among chickens and pigeons, with a turkey hanging behind her, in the kitchen of a 17th-century Genoese aristocratic residence. In fact, among local noble families at the time, the profession of cook was reserved exclusively for men, while women could only perform more menial tasks, such as plucking poultry. That this is an aristocratic residence is certain, given the presence in the foreground of a rich embossed silver basin with an elaborate handle depicting a female bust. The painting is mentioned for the first time in the 1683-84 inventory of Gio. Francesco I Brignole Sale, who commissioned the Palazzo Rosso residence. From the second decade of the 18th century, however, and at least until 1774, the work is always mentioned in inventories and guides in the family villa on the hill of Albaro (now the Marcelline Institute). it is very likely that this less prestigious location was motivated by the everyday subject matter of the painting, which was probably considered unsuitable for the decorum of the city palace, whose picture gallery had been enriched between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century with paintings of historical subjects or sacred iconography. The work by Strozzi - referred to in documents of the time as “il Cappuccino” because he entered the Order as a friar at the age of seventeen - is an admirable synthesis of the various influences that made up the fabric of local painting in the early decades of the 17th century: on the one hand, the Flemish fashion for depictions of “kitchens”, “markets” and “pantries”, which had already found examples in the mid-16th century in paintings by artists such as Aertsen and Beuckelaer, documented in the collections of Genoese families (two panels by these artists are now in Palazzo Bianco); on the other hand, the new attention to the genre of “still life”, due to the presence in the city of painters, still coming from Flanders, such as Jan Roos and Giacomo Liegi; finally, the first emergence of Caravaggio-inspired naturalism, which constituted the other pole of renewal in the local school. This canvas, dating from around 1625, is an example of the painter's best qualities: textured brushwork, “tasteful and suave...manipulation of colours”, “rich and robust colours”, as the sources write. From an iconographic point of view, there is a clear desire to measure oneself against the representation of popular subjects, showing an adherence to reality still unknown to Genoese painters, and singular if we consider this choice on the part of a religious figure; however, it cannot be ruled out that beyond this immediate meaning, other symbolic contents may be hidden in the painting, perhaps - as has been suggested - an allegory of the four elements, alluded to by the birds for “air”, the elaborate stagnara for “water”, the “cook” for “earth”, and “fire”, which the painter depicts with great skill crackling under the pot. Boccardo (La cucina italiana. Cuoche a confronto, 2015) hypothesises that the work was commissioned by Gio. Carlo Doria at the end of 1625; when the commissioner died that same year, the canvas then entered the Brignole-Sale collections. The painting depicts a cook plucking some animals.