ROME - From the height of his white horse, portrayed by the great Rubens in a pose that at the time was only granted to sovereigns, the thirty-year-old Giovan Carlo Doria welcomes visitors with an image of himself that already speaks volumes about the refinement and opulence of its rich Genoa.
Paul Rubens, Giovan Carlo Doria, on display at the Scuderie del Quirinale
It was 1606 and the amazing Ligurian city that a few days ago the Ukrainian Prime Minister Zelensky twinned with his Mariupol, recalling the bombing that devastated its wonders in 1944, was then experiencing a golden period, transformed by trade into an international financial capital where money, but also silver, which came in large quantities from South America, had made art an excellent form of investment.
Palaces, churches, villas, all rich in frescoes, marbles, tapestries.
Buildings so beautiful that the Flemish Rubens always felt the need to design interiors and facades and then to publish two volumes of these drawings to make them known and appreciated even by the European bourgeoisie.
With the houses of the patricians and great merchants crammed with huge family portraits, the tables sparkling with silver.
And a crowd of artists arrived from all over to animate a Baroque century that right here, between the walls and the people of this "Superb" city, as Petrarch had defined it, took on a very particular, if not even unique, character.
Imagined and organized together with the National Gallery of art in Washington and unfortunately partly limited by the pandemic that ultimately blew up the American stage, "Superbarocco, art in Genoa from Rubens to Magnasco", the great exhibition that from March 26 to March 3 July opens at the Scuderie del Quirinale, reconstructs and recounts precisely these atmospheres, with immense, overwhelming, dazzling works, sometimes even in size.
And an exceptional selection of objects, from incredibly sculpted silvers to opulent wall tables, which add to canvases, altarpieces, sculptures, in marble and silver, to extraordinary tapestries.
A dizzying ensemble that gives the sense of an era and a worldly society rich in international relations, where different styles, cultures and schools coexisted.
"An exhibition designed to tell about Genoa outside of Genoa", says the historian Piero Boccardo, curator together with Jonathan Bober and Franco Boggero of this ambitious project that was born in 2015 and finally came to light simultaneously and in accordance with a vast series of events which from 26 March will also start in the Ligurian capital.
Designed to deepen studies and historical research, as underlined by the curators and the director of the Lanfranconi Stables.
But also to send a message from Genoa which, in the words of the regional governor Giovanni Toti and the mayor Marco Bucci, suffered the collapse of the Morandi bridge even before the "winter of the pandemic".
And that today, as after the plague that scourged it in the seventeenth century,
Antoon Van Dick, Paola Adorno Brignole Sale 1627, on display at the Scuderie del Quirinale
Complex and mostly limited to its territory, the three curators point out, the Baroque in Genoa "was almost never sufficiently understood or appreciated. So much so that the works of its artists, with the exception of the not many active around for Italy (from Bernardo Strozzi to Filippo Parodi or Alessandro Magnasco) they are scarce outside Liguria ".
Just as few museums in Europe and the United States "have a small representation".
It is no coincidence that many of the works on display come from private collectors.
A tradition of the city that starts from afar, once again points out Boccardo, right from the golden age of the Baroque, where Giovan Carlo Doria, also he who also died young, had even managed to own 700 paintings.
From portraits to still lifes, drawings, religious paintings: the journey of the Stables in the Genoese Baroque offers a little bit of everything, always focusing, Bober underlines, "on the most representative artists and choosing the masterpiece for each of them".
With the support of the sponsors, in the front row Webuild, the generosity of the Washington museum and the help of truly exceptional loans, underlines the president of the Scuderie Mario De Simoni.
Above all, the amazing silver Immaculate Madonna chosen to close the itinerary: commissioned by seven Genoese in 1748, it was used to thank the doge Giovan Francesco Brignole for the role he played in the conflict with the Austrian troops who had occupied the city.
In some way from the Baroque Genoa also a sign of peace.
Immaculate Madonna in silver on display at the Quirinale Stables
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