The model is a reconstruction of the cutter –  a fast boat, with a single mast - with which the Genoese privateer Giuseppe Bavastro, friend and collaborator of the French general Massena, managed to breach the naval blockade that the British had placed around Genoa in 1800.

The model presents in precise detail the rigging that made it extraordinarily fast, as well as some interesting details such as the horizontal windlass. The cutter was a vessel typical of the British navy, used specifically in pursuit of corsairs. It was not a popular vessel in Liguria, where instead a similar boat - the bovo - was used, though, rigged with Latin sails.

At the time of sailing ships, this device was used to estimate the route sailed.

A wooden tablet on which the compass rose was either painted or engraved, the rhombuses (the 32 reference directions) each bore a series of eight holes. During the 4-hour watch, at the end of every half hour (measured with an hourglass), the helmsman inserted a peg in one of the holes in the rhombus corresponding to the direction of the ship's wake (read on the compass); a second peg noted the average speed, measured with the ship’s “log”.

The recording device was used for the "handover" between sailors who were often illiterate. The pilots would later reconstruct the daily route and record the data on the navigation plan, in order to record and correct the inevitable deviations from the planned route.

Algiers, although under foreign dominion since ancient times, to the Romans, the Byzantines and subsequently to the Arabs, has always preserved its Berber identity, even in the context of the Islamic community. Infact in 1529, after two centuries of Spanish occupation of the island of Penon, which overlooks the city, the inhabitants freed themselves and declared their allegiance to the Ottoman Empire, of which they became the western military outpost.

From the first half of the fourteenth century, the Venetians found themselves on the front line facing the expansion of the Ottoman Turks.

Venice which had, since the Fourth Crusade (1204), gained possession from the Byzantine Empire  of numerous islands in the Ionian and Aegean, now found itself losing them one by one.

There were seven Turkish-Venetian wars. The last - fought between 1714 and 1718 - marked the definitive cession of Dalmatia to Venice by an Ottoman Empire in decline.

The island of Tabarca is located a short distance off the coast of Tunisia. The painting is a “twin” to another depiction of the same island seen from the north. In 1540 the Bey of Tunis gave the island in concession to the Lomellini family and it is their flag that is shown flying over the castle.

The family was part of Andrea Doria's circle, and the concession was probably the ransom paid for the liberation of the Turkish pirate Dragut, captured in 1540 by Giannettino Doria, grandson of Andrea Doria.

The Lomellini colonized Tabarca, transferring a group of Genoese from Pegli (then a village near the city), with the aim of exploiting its  huge coral resources. The community continued to live on the island until 1738, when with the approval of King Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy they moved to the Sardinian island of Carloforte. The oldest Genoese dialect is still spoken there

The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks (1453) was a shocking and, indeed, epoch changing event for the whole of Europe, marking the definitive collapse of the ancient Eastern Roman Empire. However, the regime instituted by the City’s new rulers (depicted on the frame of the map) proved tolerant  towards the empire’s ethnic and religious minorities. Proof of this is the district of Pera, on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus (shown on the right of the map). An ancient settlement of Italian merchants, particularly Genoese, which was inhabited by an Italo-Levantine community as late as the beginning of the twentieth century.

Rubaldo Merello was a sculpture, painter and elegant designer. His work references the symbolism of Plinio Nomellini and Gaetano Previati, but also to the novelties brought to Genoa by Giuseppe Cominetti, to the international sinuosity of the liberty lines.
The artist was best known for his landscapes dedicated to the promontory of Portofino, to the small inlet of San Fruttuoso, with the Doria tower where he lived.

His visions of nature are proposed through the intellectual filter of unnatural, often textual colours, the characteristic cobalt blue, red, yellow, bright green.

Merello's works were purchased by the Municipality of Genoa in 1926 and were very much appreciated by the first director of the Museums of Genoa Orlando Grosso who wanted to dedicate a room in the Modern Art Museum to the artist and friend.