A superb Baroque: art in Genoa, 1600-1750

Abstract

"In the seventeenth century, Genoa completed its transformation from a faded maritime power of feuding old families into the banking center of Europe with a functioning republican government. Accumulating enormous wealth, the leading Genoese turned to cultural investment. The first stage in this artistic development, which took place over the second half of the sixteenth century, had seen the emergence of a distinctive indigenous style. Building on that foundation, Genoese artists and their patrons created an art of extraordinary material sumptuousness, visual splendor, and exuberant feeling - a singularly rich and beautiful expression of baroque style. The catalog and exhibition at the National Gallery of Art - the first of Genoese baroque art in the United States - include works in all major media: painting, sculpture, decorative arts, drawings, and prints. A Superb Baroque features seventy paintings, the area of greatest production and innovation, with choice works by the school's few well-known painters, including Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Alessandro Magnasco. Key works by the principal non-Genoese Italians and foreigners drawn to the city's flourishing environment - Rubens, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Orazio Gentileschi, Van Dyck, Francesco Solimena - are also presented. Approximately fifteen sculptures provide a counterpoint to the paintings, including several full-size statues by the principal figures - Pierre Puget, Filippo Parodi, Anton Maria Maragliano - as well as terracotta sketches and smaller-scale repetitions of monumental groups. The decorative arts are represented by fifteen of the finest examples, from spectacular ceremonial silver objects to lavish gilt furniture and furnishings. Some seventy choice drawings and prints, most by the same artists as the paintings and objects, are included."