The canvas, the origin of which is still unknown, was registered in 1921 in the inventory of Palazzo Bianco as a copy of Lionello Spada da Caravaggio. In 1953 it was identified by Caterina Marcenaro and, the following year, it was published by Roberto Longhi as the autographed version of the Lombard master from which derivative copies were drawn, especially from the Sicilian area. Various hypotheses have been formulated relating to the commission and the ancient provenance of this painting, but there are still no certain elements that allow us to reconstruct the events of the work until its "discovery" in the Genoese deposits. One of the most accredited hypotheses linked the Ecce Homo of Palazzo Bianco with the work that Caravaggio himself, in an autographed writing dated June 1605, promised to the Roman nobleman Massimo Massimi, a prominent figure in counter-reformed Rome; other studies, on the other hand, have proposed identifying this canvas with the one already in the Genoese collection of Pietro Gentile; with the one mentioned in the will of the Genoese citizen Lanfranco Massa, drawn up in Naples in 1630, or with the one that appears meticulously described in the inventory of the Neapolitan collection of the Spanish Juan de Lezcano (in 1631). Beyond the various hypotheses, therefore, the only incontrovertible fact can be seen in the numerous "repentances", visible in the hands of Pilate, in the shoulders, in the hands and in the loincloth of Christ that prove the speed of execution of the work. However, the painting should have arrived in Genoa early. To reinforce this last possibility, there is no doubt that precise formal references to Caravaggio's composition are found in works by artists active in Genoa already in the early decades of the seventeenth century, such as Strozzi, Borzone, Orazio De Ferrari and Van Dyck, who immediately captured the innovative characters of the lighting choices. As in Caravaggio, in fact, also in this painting - in which echoes of the painter's Lombard training are evident - lights and shadows are charged with symbolic meanings so that in the luminous light of the body of Christ, depicted in the resigned attitude of the Agnus Dei, the black of Pilate's dress contrasts with it, which strengthens, even visually, the negative role of the Roman procurator as judge. The eloquent gesture of the latter's hands, then, inviting the spectators to enter the scene depicted beyond the parapet, gives the episode the characteristics of a figurative "sacred drama".

The work, considered one of the masterpieces of the artist's early maturity, bears the inscription "Canova Roma 1790" on the back, but was actually made between 1794 and 1796, gaining great fame only a few years after its execution, when he made the his dazzling appearance at the Parisian Salon of 1808. On that occasion the statue was welcomed with great enthusiasm by the public, while it sparked a critical debate about the artist's choices regarding the boundaries between painting and sculpture and the possible interference between the two arts. In fact, in the penitent Magdalene, Canova works the marble by shaping the material to its extreme possibilities, passing from the extreme smoothness of the patinated body of Magdalene to the rough and rough treatment of the base on which it is placed; the gilded bronze insert of the cross, moreover, together with the realism of the truly sculpted tears and the flowing hair that the artist treated with wax mixed with sulfur, to restore their color, appear a conscious meditation on the possibilities of reaching the same in sculpture effects of painting. These experimental characters, combined with the undeniable sensual charm of the work, determined its extraordinary fortune in the Romantic age, thanks also to its exaltation by Stendhal. The Magdalene, whose client events are being studied and for which there are several preparatory sketches and a replica preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, appears to have been sold by the artist for 1000 sequins to the representative in Rome of the Cisalpine Republic Juliot who took it to Paris, Canova's first work to reach the French capital; it was then sold to Giovanni Battista Sommariva, who exhibited it at the Salon of 1808 and transported it to Milan where it was sold to the Marquis Aguado, in 1839 ending up again in Paris. On the latter's death, shortly after, it was purchased for 59,000 francs by Raffaele De Ferrari, Duke of Galliera, and placed in his Parisian home. It then passed to the city of Genoa in 1889 as a legacy of the widow, Maria Brignole - Sale de Ferrari.

The painting is presented as an allegory: Love disarms Mars, god of war, who, astonished, surrenders to the busty charm of Venus and the intoxication caused by the wine contained in the silver flask and cup, offered to him by Bacchus, the god of the joy of living. Venus wears contemporary clothes and her face and her shapely physiognomy reflect the canons of beauty common in Rubensian production and do not belong, as the inventories of the Brignole - Sale house wanted, to the painter's second wife. Mars, on the other hand, wears the typical lansquenet attire and is not a self-portrait of the artist, as estimated by the aforementioned inventories, but reproduces the face, identical right down to the expression, of a member of the Van den Wijngaerd family, which Rubens portrayed at least other twice. The Fury that bursts, on the right, from the shadows of a landscape that, on the left, turns out to be desolate, burnt and upset by the war, was created with vibrant essential touches of brown and black directly on the reddish-brown preparation and contrasts with the sensuous chromatic intensity and the intact brightness of the impasto of the figures in the foreground, of Titian ancestry. Masterpiece of the Flemish artist's late maturity, datable between 1632 and 1635, the panel is mentioned for the first time in Genoa in about 1735, when it appeared to belong to Gio. Francesco II Brignole - Sale in the Palazzo Rosso; according to a recent survey, the painting nevertheless arrived in the city from Madrid about thirty years earlier, that is, after 1691. The events of the work in the following thirty years up to 1735 are still unknown.

An absolute masterpiece of the civic collections, this panel with coping is the work of one of the most interesting and innovative painters of the Florentine school of the second half of the fifteenth century, Filippino Lippi, son of the Carmelite friar Filippo Lippo, also a leading painter in fifteenth-century Florence. The altarpiece, made between 1502 and 1503 for the commissioning of Francesco Lomellini, a figure in sight of the Genoese political world and shrewd client, is an excellent example of the pictorial qualities and originality of the conception of Filippino's painting: his art, in fact , testifies to the encounter between the great Tuscan Renaissance tradition, with its attention to nature and to the human figure studied in its relationship with space, and a new, more restless feeling, which already marks the overcoming of certainties at the turn of the century , of the balance and measure of the first season of "rebirth" of the fifteenth century. The figures of Filippino, in fact, are unusually elongated and lean, characterized by a pathetic accentuation that moves away from the beauty of the forms of the first Renaissance “classicism”. The panel of Palazzo Bianco is a perfect example of the painter's poetics, finding highly significant bizarre elements even in the architectures that frame the saints represented: the ancient arches in ruins - symbol of the triumph of Christian values over the pagan world - are in fact painted in irregular scanning and the presence of a red marble column that is not very consistent with the rest of the building stands out; moreover, the Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows is not painted perfectly aligned with the base on which he rests, assuming a deliberately unstable posture. To enrich the complexity of the symbolic references is the presence, on the left of the composition, of a snake hidden between the cracks of the ancient marbles, a negative symbol of infidelity as opposed to the lizard, animal of God, always warmed by the rays of the sun; and again, the epigraph on the table decorated with harpies on which Saint Sebastian is placed bears the inscription "Imp. God. Et. Max ”, which places the story of martyrdom under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. It should be emphasized, observing the accuracy of the reliefs of this marble base, that Vasari himself recalls the frequent use by Filippino "of the ancient things of Rome". The accuracy of the details of the background landscape on the right deserves attention, with figurines in contemporary clothes and the coping with a Madonna and Child between two angels, with refined chromatic accords. The painting, sent to Genoa from Florence, bears the date and personal "company" of the painter - the acrostic Glo / Vi / s - on the back.

In the garden of Villa Saluzzo called Paradiso, a well-known suburban residence in Genoa on the slopes of the Albaro hill, a group of nobles and some ecclesiastics spend their hours amiably: a crumbling wall separates them from the vast landscape that can be enjoyed from that terracing of the park. Ladies, knights, cicisbei and prelates whose light and dark cassocks constitute pauses of light, marking the sequence of vanity of the whole, are observed by the painter who, aloof, at the service of the lords, but not participating in their world, is intent to portray the scene, noting every detail. Magnasco's agile, flickering and at the same time precise touch, with irony and critical spirit, shows the now inexorable disintegration of the society of the ancien régime, which appears unaware of how much his own "golden paradise" is threatened from the outside, if a boy with clothes crumpled it manages, undisturbed, to climb over the ruined wall. Three quarters of the composition are occupied by the panorama overlooking the villa, the true protagonist, at least quantitatively, of the painting; Magnasco gives a meticulous recording of it, revealing an adherence to truth very close to the spirit of the Enlightenment, for which the view, which the unusual format of the painting recalls, is an instrument of investigation and rationalization of space, not at all in contrast with the conscious dissent of the 'author towards the decorative and celebratory purposes in vogue at his time. Critics, by now unanimously, place this canvas around 1740, when, returning to Genoa, his hometown, Magnasco re-proposed themes and ways that had made him famous in Florence and Milan for the more conformist and less up-to-date Genoese client.

It is a painting, so to speak, autobiographical and for this reason enriched with the double artistic and emotional-sentimental value: first of all, it constitutes a real filial homage, but it can also be read as an act of gratitude by the student towards the own teacher. Luca Cambiaso, the most important painter of the sixteenth century in Genoa, had, in fact, his father Giovanni, an artist well connected with the Genoese client, as his first teacher. He introduced him to the art of painting by showing him the fundamental notions through the continuous exercise on the masters of the past and also insisting on letting him study the art of foreshortening and modeling, so much so that at fifteen Luca had already achieved a good education and could be inserted in the construction sites that adorned the facades of Genoese buildings. The advanced age of his father Giovanni constitutes the terminus ante quem for the chronological location of the work, presumably executed around 1570, not long before the death of the portrayed in 1579. The pictorial execution is of great rigor and simplicity. Using a range of shades ranging from brown to black, spread for thin and light glazes, the painter gives the whole an almost monochromatic effect, which affects both the room in which the scene is set and the characters. The format, more or less square, enhances the two faces, which are located close together and at the same height. The father stares the viewer directly in the eye; Luca, on the other hand, looks elsewhere, perhaps in the mirror he needed to observe himself in the act of painting himself. Above, affixed to the wall, you can see some objects that evidently allude to a painter's studio: two medallions, probably casts from ancient or antiquing gems and, in the middle of them, a leg that projects its shadow on the wall, probably a mannequin of those that were used for the study of positions, perhaps allusion to the activity of sculpture, practiced by the artist very early under the impulse of his father.

It is perhaps the best known painting by this Genoese artist, who ended his career in the service of Philip II of Spain, whose pictorial process, rather articulated, starts from a mannerist-style gigantism to arrive at an essential painting, made up of compositions almost geometric, the rigor of which is emphasized by shades limited in the range and tuned on the basis of simple chords. The cultural context that determined this "nocturnal" choice was its adherence to the more spiritual tendencies of the Catholic Reformation, while the domestic intonation, of great communicative impact, is aimed at promoting the sacred fact, hinging 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 fold of Mary towards the nursing Child, the cradle that will soon welcome him as well as the gesture of Saint Anne who, having suspended the spinning, lovingly recommends silence to John and the profile of Joseph who, turned away, he is going to another room, leaving the women with the warm intimacy of this moment, he is a grazing, external, cold light. The figure of Jesus, on the other hand, is the only one that emerges completely from the half-light: his pearly flesh seems to shine with its own light, giving the humble and active scene a mystical atmosphere.

Descending from an established family of painters and raised in a fervent intellectual environment, Valerio Castello was a very precocious artist, able to overcome the teachings of even established local masters, to turn his gaze to models of international importance: Procaccini, Correggio, Parmigianino , Veronese, Rubens and Van Dyck are the reference points of the artistic career of this painter who had a crucial role, albeit in his short life, in the transition from Baroque to Rococo aesthetics, placing himself as one of the most original and innovative personalities of the Seventeenth century, not only Genoese. In this small but delightful painting he demonstrates an absolute mastery in receiving and reworking the stimuli of the great masters and, at the same time, provides a masterful representation of intimate and delicate maternal love. The tender gesture of the Virgin, intent on covering the Child without disturbing his sleep, is resolved in a graceful composition, in which the soft pastel shades are treated with a fresh and very agile pictorial vein. The brushstroke spreads the color now with transparent glazes, which render the lightness of the veil and of the sheets where the child is blissfully lying, on which the painter pauses to emphasize childish grace and sweetness, now for more full-bodied backgrounds, found in the red cloth on the background and in the dress of the Madonna. The elongated profile of the Virgin, the tapered fingers, the elegance of the movement closely resemble the women of Parmigianino, but the style is less artificial and more direct, mediated by compositional schemes that refer to Van Dyck, of whom, too, Valerio provides a personal, highly original interpretation.

The Sorrowful Christ, purchased by the Municipality of Genoa in 1953, comes from the Florentine collection of the Tempi marquises and is unanimously recognized as the autographed prototype of a series of similar images of which there are over a dozen versions, almost all of which are by Italian hand. Some of these were performed in Florence in the sixteenth century, a fact that seems to reinforce the hypothesis of a presence of the work in this ancient city. Two of these copies, respectively kept at the Musée dex Beaux-Arts in Dijon and Strasbourg, came as panels of a diptych coupled with a Mater Dolorosa, the half-figure Virgin in prayer with her face flooded with tears, according to an iconography devotional established in the Netherlands as early as the mid-15th century. The autograph version of the Madonna, probable counterpart to the Genoese panel, has recently been identified in a private collection. The original work was therefore made up of two panels of which the Genoese panel with the mourning Christ in the bust constituted the left compartment and the Virgin the right one. The close relationship between the two figures is highlighted by the position of Christ, turned towards the Virgin, with his right arm in a blessing position, suggesting a three-dimensional effect, also accentuated by the position of his left hand which, emerging in foreshortening, seems almost measure the space between the viewer and the depicted image. In the composition, built with an essential structure of great emotional impact, the meticulous description of some details such as the crown of thorns with the blood running down the face, the tears and the stigmata, reveals Memling's extraordinary and refined pictorial technique.

Trained in Antwerp, he is documented in the workshop of Jan de Wael, father of the painters Lucas and Cornelis, and, subsequently, in that of Frans Snyders where he specializes in the representation of still lifes. Arriving in Italy in 1614, he first went to Rome and, in 1616, to Genoa, where he settled permanently until his death, opening a very active and very successful shop. Although his production includes both biblical, allegorical and mythological subjects and vigorous portraits in which the Vandychian suggestion is evident, the notoriety in the local artistic culture is linked to his specialization in performing still lifes, as already reported by the sources a he coeval: “[…] he showed himself exceedingly excellent in competing with nature in the expression of fruits, flowers & animals” (Soprani 1674). In this work, in fact, the absolute protagonist of the composition is a real "triumph" of flowers and fruits - grapes, oranges, chestnuts, figs, pomegranates, poppy bulbs, watermelon, pumpkins and almonds - portrayed inside a setting characterized by the presence, in the background, of a column base and a red cloth. The naturalness of the subject and the pictorial virtuosity with which Roos tactfully returns the different elements of the composition are a consequence of the practice of studying and processing the subjects in repertoires (carnets, models, sketches) that make these still life passages recognizable in other paintings. , both by the same painter, as in the case of the Vendemmia di Sileno in Palazzo Bianco, and by other artists, first of all Van Dyck, with whom he collaborated during the years of his stay in Genoa.

The sacred subject, painted with bright and vivid colors, is one of the most frequent in the painting of Orazio De Ferrari, a pupil of Andrea Ansaldo, in whose work the influences of Van Dyck, Rubens and Reni are evident. The canvas, made in 1650, was purchased in 1959, but its provenance is still unknown; it is one of the masterpieces of the Genoese artist's maturity who, precisely in this kind of medium-large compositions, found the most congenial dimension to express his expressive abilities. The painting presents in the center of the composition the figures of Christ and the adulteress, around which the other characters are arranged in a semicircle, while the architectural base on the right foreshortened measures the space.

A native of Sestri Ponente, then a small autonomous village on the sea west of Genoa, Antonio Travi chose the landscape genre as a privileged field of his artistic creation in the middle of the seventeenth century, placing himself at the attention of the noble client of the Republic for his rustic views populated by figurines dressed in humble clothes and intent on daily occupations: fishermen, shepherds or wayfarers are placed next to houses in ruins, anticipating the "picturesque" genre of the following century. Travi trained in the workshop of Bernardo Strozzi, Travi derives from the master the evidence of the brushstroke and the love for color, differing however from the Cappuccino for a clarity and precision that looks to the Flemish active in Genoa and has a particular reference in the German Goffredo Waals, passing through the city in 1623 and present in various collections of the local aristocracy. The wide open spaces on the sky of Travi's paintings thus light up with an adamantine sheen rendered with subtle veils, albeit sometimes crossed by clouds with a more material trait. The same popular everyday life of his genre subjects also characterizes the paintings with a sacred theme, always dominated by an order and clarity of the composition that infuses a sovereign calm in the environment represented. The Adoration of the Shepherds of Palazzo Bianco stands out, within the artist's catalog, for the decisive foreground adopted and for the imposing of the numerous figures against the background; typical of his palette are the accurate chromatic accords and the studied insertion of brighter colors on the basic tones of earths and whites, subtly modulated. Certainly we also find in this work, although so crowded with figures, that feeling of "profound contemplation" and that "poetic of long silences" that critics recognize the artist. A more grotesque realism emerges only in the three figures under the arch on the right of the canvas, which are reminiscent of Nordic genre painting.