Superbarocco

The exhibition “Superbarocco. Art in Genova from Rubens to Magnasco “co-produced and designed together with the National Gallery of Washington, the only American public museum, with the special collaboration of the Municipality and the Museums of Genova, tells and celebrates the extraordinary period of the Genoese Baroque.

The exhibition is curated by Jonathan Bober, head of the National Gallery’s Department of Old Master Prints, by Piero Boccardo, director until recently of the Genoese Palazzo Rosso and one of the world’s leading experts on the subject and by Franco Boggero Art historian and Ligurian painting expert of the XVI  and XVII centuries.

The exhibition itinerary traces, through a body of about 120 works, coming from the major Italian and American institutions and from prestigious private collections, this extraordinary period of artistic explosion and economic flourishing of the Superb Genova and follows its historical and artistic events from the height of its splendor until his political fortune tarnishes.

The pomp and luxury, declined with great determination by the noble Genoese families, inside their residences, are found in the works exhibited at Scuderie del Quirinale, precisely because they were commissioned by these illustrious families: the robes of the portraits of Rubens and Van Dyck , the furnishings that crowd the canvases of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, the luxuriant baroque compositions by Domenico Piola and Gregorio De Ferrari, the capricious landscapes of Magnasco, the recurrent use of precious materials testify to the opulence of the period.

And so the exhibition tells us- by works, masterpieces and wonders of an entire era – the parable, almost unique in history, of a city that has become the center of the world: Genoa, the Superb.