The work, certainly performed in Genoa and dating to around 1625, shows the deep interest of Van Dyck for Venetian painting and Titian in particular.
To create Vertumno and Pomona in fact, the Flemish artist kept in mind a Titian painting seen in a Genoese collection and sketched by him in a notebook. The painting depicts an episode narrated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: Pomona, a splendid nymph in the woods, spent her days taking care of her garden and ignoring the numerous suitors who presented themselves at her gate to court her.

One of these was Vertumno, who ruled the succession of seasons and had the power to change his appearance. Vertumno, after having taken many forms in vain to win the love of Pomona, finally took the appearance of an old woman with a gentle character and praising her beauty and persuading her of the love that Vertumno felt for her, he succeeded in conquering her.

In this painting Van Dyck treats the theme of the awakening of love with sweetness and captures the poetry of this myth, which is expressed by the soft molded body of Pomona, by the light that caresses the bodies and by the gestures and expressions of the protagonists, marked by measured sensuality. In this work (which at the end of the eighteenth century was in the palace of Giorgio Doria di Montaldeo in Strada Nuova and which was donated in 1959 to the Gallery by Marquis Ambrogio Doria) next to the master is also engaged a collaborator, which the critics identified in Jan Roos, The Still Life in the foreground.

Popular scenes, parties and game scenes are the favorite subjects of the Dutch Jan Steen, whose flowery Easter stands out for the high quality of the execution. The work was purchased by the Dukes of Galliera in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century.

It is perhaps the most famous painting by this Genoese artist, who ended his career in the service of Philip II of Spain, whose pictorial process, rather articulate, starts from a gigantism of mannerist mold to arrive at an essential painting, made of almost geometric compositions, whose rigour is emphasized by limited shades in the range and plastered according to simple chords.
The cultural context that determined this "nocturnal" choice was its adherence to the most spiritual tendencies of the Catholic Reformation, while the domestic intonation, of great communicative impact, is aimed at promoting the sacred fact, hinged on the personal and intimate devotion of the client.

The painting (1570-1575) takes its title from the dim light of a candle that can be seen at the edge of the composition.
In reality, what highlights the delicate bending of Mary towards the breastfeeding Child, the cradle that will soon welcome him and the gesture of St Anne who, suspended the spinning, lovingly recommends silence to John and the profile of Joseph that, turned away, is going to another room, leaving women the warm intimacy of this moment, is a grazing light, external, cold. The figure of Jesus, on the other hand, is the only one that emerges completely from the shadows: his pearly flesh seems to shine with its own light, giving the scene a mystical atmosphere.

This great painting by Luciano Borzone, a Genoese painter very close to the ways of the Lombard artists Procaccini, Crespi and Cerano, constituted the altarpiece of the chapel of San Giovanni in the church of Santo Spirito in Genoa, of which Borzone had signed the entire decorative apparatus. It consisted of six smaller canvases, unfortunately dispersed after the dissolution of the religious orders, implemented since 1798 by the Ligurian Republic, making it impossible today to rebuild the whole.
Borzone’s works "in order to be brightly coloured and very well studied in the poem induced Orazio Gentileschi to look for who was the author, and to visit him in his house to buy his friendship, which was between them while they lived inseparable"Thus Soprani, in his Vita de' Pittori e Scultori e Architetti Genovesi (1674), refers to the impression of an artist of fame as Gentileschi before the art of the Genoese master.
The mention of Gentileschi also provides the terminus ante quem of the execution of the work that is placed between 1620, the date of the construction of the chapel and 1621, when the master, during his stay in Genoa, saw it.
It is a youthful work, therefore, but already a masterpiece, in which the master manages to cleverly combine the Venetian culture with the Tuscan. The sobriety of the stage, on which they play a dazzling color and chiaroscuro lighting effects, elegantly highlights the grandeur of a ceremony meditated, solemn, but at the same time affectionate. The delightful scene of the cherubs intent on interpreting the inscription on the bindello forgotten by the Baptist, is a test of skill in the rendering of soft chiaroscuro, contributing to attenuate the austere tone of the ensemble.

With Saint Francis in ecstasy comforted by the angel opens the selection of works by Gioacchino Assereto, one of the most gifted protagonists of the Genoese school of painting of the seventeenth century. Having arrived at Palazzo Bianco in 1898, following the purchase of the Palazzo Patrone in Piazza della Zecca, it is a work of great quality but problematic in terms of dating, to be placed perhaps shortly before 1630.

Performed with a sensitive technique, it is a very concentrated composition, to which dramatic light version add acute notes white lumeggiature. He interprets ecstasy as a lacerating event: the bruised flesh of the saint, his robe, his hands with stigmata, the skull that emerges from the shadow express a precise concept of Imitatio Christi, which culminates in physical contact between Christ and Francis, whose head, with clear symbolic intent, covers that of the Crucifix.

The dense composition, but not suffocated, less torn than other works by Assereto, focuses on the figure of Christ (grandiose in proportions but classically elegant in the positure of the body by the soft flesh permeated with light) surrounded by brutal and brazen executioners, from which emanates, especially in the vibrant expression of pain of the face, a suffering but contained emotionality. Datable at the end of 1620, and purchased in 1966, the painting of the Genoese author appears permeated with Lombard culture, but it seems stimulated also by the lesson of Giulio Cesare Procaccini and affected by the study of works by Van Dyck present in Genoa