Gio Carlo Doria was a Genoese nobleman with a great passion for the arts. Hundreds of canvases were kept in his house, including this painting. Painted in 1606 by the young Pieter Paul Rubens, father of the Baroque and one of the most sought-after European painters, the portrait depicts the nobleman on horseback: an honor worthy of a sovereign. Gio Carlo's strange calm perhaps represents his dominion over the forces of nature. During the Second World War, before becoming part of the museum's collections, the work had been stolen by the Nazis.

The sculpture was part of the monument to Margaret of Brabant, wife of Emperor Henry VII. Died in Genoa in 1311, she had the honor of being immortalized in the only tomb ever sculpted by Giovanni Pisano, the greatest sculptor of Italian Gothic. The various elements that made it up were dispersed when San Francesco, the Genoese church where it was kept, was destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1960, Justice , a masterpiece of medieval expressiveness, was found in a Genoese garden, reused as an ornament for a fountain. Together with the sculptural group with the Elevatio Animae , now in the Sant'Agostino museum, it constitutes one of the only surviving elements of the monument.

The small plate has a very worn pictorial film, and several details are unfortunately lost. However, the surviving excerpts make it possible to bring the painting closer to the catalog of Fra Bartolomeo, a Dominican friar and painter active in Florence between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The scene depicts the moment in which the risen Christ is recognized by his follower Magdalene, who throws herself at his feet. However, Jesus is now part of the kingdom of heaven and admonishes her with the cry of "Noli me tangere", do not touch me. Fra Bartolomeo challenged himself several times with this subject, of which other versions and some drawings survive.

The panel is a copy with variants of a painting by Andrea del Sarto, one of the major Florentine artists of the early sixteenth century. It was performed by Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi, his pupil. Compared to the original, there is a more classic and calm atmosphere here, where the figures emerge from the darkness of the background. Furthermore, unlike the work of the master Pier Francesco, he inserted details such as the cross of San Giovannino and the cloth on which the Child Jesus is stretched out, elements that allude to the Passion of Christ.

To test his faith, God asked the patriarch Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son. The painting depicts the moment in which an angel sent by God stops the arm of the old man before he completes his gesture. All the characteristics of the art of Orazio Gentileschi are present here, a Pisan painter capable of transforming the language of Caravaggio into a symphony of crystalline lights and very lively colours. The painter was much appreciated in Genoa, where he lived for a few years and where this painting is documented starting at least from the eighteenth century.

Scipione Clusone was a leader in the service of the Republic of Venice and here he is portrayed while getting dressed with the help of a dwarf page. A constant presence in the courts of the time, where they worked as servants, the dwarfs were often included in the paintings that portrayed the Venetian society of the time. In the twentieth century, the painting was stolen by German soldiers with the aim of exhibiting it in a museum wanted by Hitler. When he returned to Italy in 1988, he was assigned to this museum.

The dynamic painting of the Neapolitan Luca Giordano fascinated the Genoese, who collected several of his paintings. This canvas was owned by the noble Costantino Balbi, from whose collections many works arrived at Palazzo Spinola by inheritance. Only in recent years has the canvas, not included in these hereditary passages, been bought by the museum. It represents an episode of the legend of Rome: the city had just been founded and King Romulus decided to populate it by kidnapping the women of a rival people, the Sabines.

The painting, together with the one with Giaele and Sisara , comes from a villa located in Genoa Cornigliano, which previously belonged to the Spinolas and was then sold to the Dufour family in the 19th century. Various documents from the historical archive conserved in Palazzo Spinola inform us of numerous renovations in that holiday residence, above all by Paolo Francesco Spinola, owner of Palazzo Spinola between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As in the canvas that acts as a pendant , also in this painting an episode taken from the Book of Judges has been depicted with the intention of exalting two heroines of the Old Testament: Delilah, hired by the Philistines, manages to get Samson to reveal that the secret of its strength lies in the hair. The girl then makes him cut his hair while he sleeps, favoring his capture.

The episode depicted here tells of how Jael, wife of the chieftain Eber, killed the Canaanite general Sisara by driving a peg into his temple, after persuading him to rest in his tent.

The scene is presented by Bartolomeo Guidobono with eloquent theatricality. The artist was in fact famous at the time for his strong decorative taste and, with great versatility, he executed large cycles of frescoes, as well as paintings on ceramics.

The canvas displayed next to this, depicting Samson and Delilah , is characterized by the same dimensions and has been its pendant since its origins.

The canvas is part of a nucleus of works from Palazzo Cattaneo Adorno acquired by the National Gallery of Liguria. Like the other two compositions, from the same monumental format with Mercury and Argos and Perseus and Andromeda , the painting represents an episode of the Metamorphoses of the Latin poet Ovid.

Here we witness the desperate escape of Siringa, chased by the god Pan, shortly before her transformation into marsh reeds. The nymph will carry out her own metamorphosis thanks to the intervention of the Naiads, represented on the left, who will thus save her from the cravings of Pan. He will find himself embracing a bundle of reeds and, enchanted by the sound of the wind that passes through them, he will invent his flute, also called a syringe in honor of the nymph.

The painting is fruit of the collaboration of Gregorio and Lorenzo De Ferrari. The first was one of the protagonists of the Genoese Baroque season. His son Lorenzo, here at the beginning of his career, will be in 1734-1736 the director of the redecoration campaign that Maddalena Doria Spinola wanted to implement on the second noble floor of Palazzo Spinola and which will culminate with the creation of the Gallery of Mirrors.

Also in this painting it is represented a metamorphosis: the beautiful Io is been transformed into a white heifer by Jupiter to hide her from the jealousy of his wife Juno. At the center is Argo, the shepherd with a thousand eyes - hidden by a blindfold - to whom Juno had entrusted the calf because kept her away from her husband. Mercury, on the right, through the melody of the flute and the story of the myth of Pan and Syringa , manages to put the guardian to sleep in order to kill him and free Io from his control.

The young man in armor on the right is Perseus, represented while he is recovering after having saved Andromeda, lying on the left. The young woman had been sacrificed to the sea monster depicted, petrified, below her, as punishment for the pride of her mother Cassiopeia. The painting also narrates the mythological origin of the coral, born from algae soaked in the blood of the monster and turned into stone in contact with the head of the Medusa, depicted in the lower centre. The sea creatures surrounding Perseus and Andromeda play with the corals, joyfully amazed at this transformation.

The canvas sanctions the handover from the generation of Gregorio, with a Baroque imprint, to that of his son Lorenzo, distinguished by more elegant and composed, typical of the eighteenth century.

The canvas is part of a series of paintings dedicated to the famous mythological hero. Together with the other three exhibited next to it, it once adorned the halls of Palazzo Cattaneo Adorno (today Via Garibaldi), a home where there were also the other monumental representations of the Metamorphoses , acquired at the same time by the Galleria Nazionale della Liguria.

Hercules is in this case depicted as he passes the second of the twelve tests he was subjected to to atone for the guilt of having exterminated his own family. The sea monster about to succumb to his feet is the Hydra of Lerna, endowed with numerous heads capable of regrowth. The skin that the hero wears is instead the proof of overcoming the first effort, or the fight against the Nemean lion.

In this canvas Hercules is busy while facing the seventh effort. He defeats a huge bull capable of breathing fire from its nostrils that was infesting the island of Crete. Thanks to his extraordinary strength, the demigod will succeed in the enterprise of taming the mythical animal.

Like the other paintings in the same series, this subject too is was created by Gregorio De Ferrari in the mature phase of his activity, started in the workshop of Domenico Fiasella, one of the most representative Genoese masters of the seventeenth century, and then enriched by the direct knowledge of Correggio's painting. Emilian suggestions in this case they were embellished with references to the manners of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione known as il Grechetto, another famous protagonist of the Genoese Baroque season.

In addition to overcoming the twelve labors, Hercules had to face further trials, including the fight against the giant Antaeus. These, son of Gea, goddess of the earth, was practically invulnerable when in contact with the ground. The demigod before defeating him was therefore forced to lift him from the origin of his strength and then crush him.

All the effort of the two fighting giants is rendered by Gregorio De Ferrari through the extremely elaborate use of light with strongly foreshortened postures built through fast and incisive brushstrokes.

This scene concludes the earthly story of Hercules: after an intense existence studded with trials and hardships, the hero dies due to the jealousy of his wife Dejanira. Envious of the attention that her consort had paid to the beautiful Iole, she in fact sprinkled the demigod's dress with a powerful poison obtained from the blood of the centaur Nessus. As soon as it was worn, the tunic caused Hercules pain so severe that he wanted to die. This is the moment depicted by Gregorio De Ferrari: Hercules has just thrown himself on the funeral pyre he has built, while, on the left, Philoctetes, whom the demigod had asked to light the fire, flees in fear.

The smaller dimensions compared to the other four canvases dedicated to Hercules have led to doubts as to whether this work belongs to the series dedicated to the labours, even if iconographically it constitutes its ideal conclusion. In fact, the canvas depicts the happy epilogue of the hero's story, saved by his father Jupiter from the fire of the stake and welcomed into Olympus. Hercules is about to marry the goddess of eternal youth Hebe, dressed in blue, and join the immortal gods. At the top left Jupiter, with the crown, seems to be addressing the character with the feathered hat depicted in the corner: it is perhaps the self-portrait of the painter, who wanted to include youthful features in the composition.

The scene shows the background on the right: Hercules running away torn apart by his poisoned robe and the three Hours waiting to welcome him to Olympus.

The painting became part of the patrimony of the Galleria Nazionale della Liguria thanks to the generous donation from a private collector.

The drawing refers to a well-known painting, now preserved in Great Britain (National Trust of Wilthshire Wilthshire, National Trust), in which Carlo Maratti, a famous exponent of the Roman Baroque, is portrayed in the act of drawing the portrait of the nobleman Nicolò Maria Pallavicino . The latter, a wealthy Genoese banker who settled in Rome, is represented as he is entering Arcadia, welcomed by Apollo and awaited by the personifications of the Virtues. In this way, the client wanted to celebrate his appointment as Honorary Academic in the prestigious Accademia di San Luca, a historic artistic institution. He was the cousin of the Pallavicinos who owned the Palazzo at the end of the seventeenth century, to whom the drawing belonged. Documented by the sources in this building, it was sold in the 19th century, but the purchase of the sheet by the State in 2000 allowed it to be exhibited again in the house where it historically was.

Painter of Calabrian origins, Mattia Preti worked mainly in Naples and Rome and ended his life in Malta.

The canvas, together with the one with the Raising of Lazarus , was probably painted in the seventh decade of the 17th century, during the painter's prolonged stay on the Mediterranean island. Made en pendant , the paintings show a profound knowledge of both the Roman pictorial culture between the 1630s and 1640s, in which the artist trained, and of the new suggestions assimilated by Preti following his activity in Naples.

Painter of Calabrian origins, Mattia Preti worked mainly in Naples and Rome and ended his life in Malta.

The canvas, together with the one with the Meeting of St Francis and St Dominic , was probably painted in the seventh decade of the 17th century, during the painter's prolonged stay on the Mediterranean island. Made en pendant , the paintings show a profound knowledge of both the Roman pictorial culture between the 1630s and 1640s, in which the artist trained, and of the new suggestions assimilated by Preti following his activity in Naples.

Called at the beginning of the 19th century “Les grandes têtes d'hommes coëffées à l'Orientale”, these compositions document the attention paid by the Genoese painter to the engravings of Rembrandt van Rijn, which he studied in Rome during a stay in the 1730s.

These are works that arise from a profound reflection by the author on the images engraved by the Dutch master, starting from his numerous self-portraits up to the series of male busts dressed in oriental clothes, made according to a fashion that achieved considerable success in Amsterdam, where these imaginative portraits, known with the term tronie , they were widely disseminated.

The series was donated to the Galleria Nazionale della Liguria in memory of the art historian and teacher Anna De Floriani.

Belonging to a noble family Genoese, Giovanni Battista Paggi was forced into exile in 1581 because guilty of murder, though in self-defense. After a stay in Aulla and Pisa, he arrived in Florence at the court of Francesco I de Medici. At the end of 1590 the painter had the chance to return to Genoa, but only within the residences of Prince Giovanni Andrea I Doria, his protector, as they were excluded from the jurisdiction of the Republic.

The Flagellation, signed and dated 1591, comes from the villa built by Andrea Doria outside the city old, where it probably decorated one of the chapels built by Giovanni Andrea and his wife Zenobia Del Carretto. The work reveals the Genoese artist's assimilation of some of the characteristics and methods of Florentine painting at the end of the sixteenth century.

The refined composition, painted around 1615, depicts an episode from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, a composition that enjoyed extraordinary success in the field of pictorial production and whose first editions were illustrated by images conceived by the Genoese Bernardo Castello. Even in the library of Paggi, a cultured and up-to-date artist, there was a copy of Tasso's poem.

In the work, among the most early representations of the literary subject made locally, the warrior Rinaldo is depicted holding the mirror to the beautiful Armida, intent on styling her hair, accompanied by a putto with a bouquet of flowers. Among the bushes on the left emerge the Crusader knights Guelfo and Ubaldo, sent to the Isola della Fortuna to make Rinaldo come to his senses from the love spell of the sorceress Armida.

Cornelis de Wael's role in the cultural environment of early seventeenth-century Genoa was not limited to the production of paintings alone. In fact, he was the point of reference for the large group of Flemish artists who wanted to sell their works in the city. These were the years in which Antoon van Dyck was active, but also Jan Wildens and Jan Roos, masters dedicated to the so-called "genre painting". It is in this type of work that Cornelis excelled, i.e. the one that the writers of the time defined as "with small figures" and which depicted crowded scenes with nobles or commoners.

The canvas is connected to another composition depicting the Eucharistic celebration for pilgrims , in which, in correspondence with the landscape, the presence of the hand of Cornelis' older brother, Lucas de Wael, has been hypothesized. The two representations were part of a series of Examples of Capuchin virtue created by Cornelis during his activity in Genoa, probably during the 1640s.