The Museums of Strada Nuova, at Palazzo Rosso, the Gallery of Modern Art, and the Ligurian Academy of Fine Arts present a precious exhibition in three venues dedicated to a great family of Genoese artists, the Quinzio: painters, draftsmen, sculptors, and fresco painters active for the city's commissions, and beyond, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Giovanni Quinzio and his sons Antonio Orazio and Tullio Salvatore, in line with the eclecticism trends widely spread in the post-unitary age, renew the academic tradition still focused on late neoclassical models by incorporating new ideas related to exoticism and veristic and naturalistic experimentation on color and light, representing in Genoa an alternative, very congenial to the taste of the local commissions, to the highly appreciated styles of Nicolò Barabino and Santo Bertelli.

Their success is evidenced by the leading role they played in some of the most important construction sites of the renewed city - fromfrescoes in the Lercari Parodi and Spinola Gambaro palaces in Strada Nuova to those of the new grand church of the Immacolata - but also by the significant commissions received for historical and celebratory paintings and sculptures, destined for prestigious locations, such as the Genoese palace of the Bank of Italy or the grand construction site of the Vittoriano in Rome. In addition to this, they also carried out the more intimate activity of portraitists, with works of intense realism and great psychological penetration, capable of influencing, in the fusion of 19th-century verismo and naturalism of impressionistic freedom, the subsequent generations of Ligurian portraitists.

Paintings, sketches, and sculptures – the bronze portrait of Prince Odone of Savoy being famous – along with a large quantity of beautiful watercolors with refined and precious hues, often related to fresco design, narrate in the three exhibition venues the many facets of success of this family "firm," allowing us, in addition, in an unprecedented way, to ideologically enter the "behind the scenes" of an artistic workshop of the time and spy on the elaboration of the creative processes from the first colorful sketches on paper.