SO LONG the maritime rival of Venice, Genoa, which cleaves to hills that descend abruptly to the Ligurian coast, remains a major port. It also remains a place of contrasts, as anyone who strays from the Strada Nuova with its astonishing procession of palaces will find if he takes the narrow salita downwards to the appropriately dedicated church of the Magdalen: even on a Sunday morning whores stand in wait. But that should not deter the sightseer, for there is much to be found within the tight confines of the medieval town. Genoa rewards the patient walker who disregards fixed itineraries.
Genoa had become a significant Mediterranean power by the eleventh century, contributing to the success of the Crusades yet eventually helping to undermine the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem. The wealth of the Genoese republic is implied by the great Romanesque cathedral of San Lorenzo; the campanile is the most splendid among several in the city, while the treasury still boasts such prized relics as the cup which Christ used at the Last Supper and a chalcedony platter thought to be that on which the head of the Baptist was delivered to Herod, with a beautiful fifteenth-century enamel head of the saint. Equally remarkable is the large silver-gilt reliquary of the saint made in 1438–45 by Teramo Danieli in collaboration with Simone Caldera. Near the site of the original castle is a secular counterpart to the campanile, the tower of the Embriachi, whose most ambitious fortification was the castle of Jebail in what is now the Lebanon. The significance of Genoa as intermediary with the East is expressed also in artistic terms, most notably in the Last Judgement at the west end of the cathedral, which is by a major master of towards 1300 from Constantinople. Parallel ties with the north are expressed in the exquisite fragments of Giovanni Pisano’s tomb of the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII, Margaret of Brabant, who died at Genoa in 1313; these are now divided rather perversely between the new museum of Sant’ Agostino and the Palazzo Spinola.
Cathedral, west door (detail).
Cathedral, Museum: Teramo Danieli, Reliquary of Saint John the Baptist, 1438–45 (detail)
Medieval Genoa faced the sea, and despite later building one can still sense something of its waterfront – now Via Gramsci – by the old port. The city gradually expanded landwards, and one small area, round the Piazza San Matteo, gives an idea of its late medieval character, with the striped Gothic façades of the houses of the Doria. The elaborate portal of one of these is surmounted by a relief of Saint George, whose popularity is attested by several others in the city, notably that of the Palazzo Valdettaro-Fieschi by the productive Ticinese Quattrocento sculptor Giovanni Gagini.
The patrons of Genoa would continue to look for outside talent. Her merchants commissioned at least two works from Jan van Eyck, whose world is echoed in the frescoed Annunciation by Justus van Ravensburg (1451) in the upper cloister of Santa Maria di Castello; this is charged with the realistic detail of the north. In 1506 Gerard David supplied a major altarpiece for the Sauli family, for San Girolamo della Cervara rather than Genoa itself; four elements of this are now in the Palazzo Rosso, including the Crucifixion in which Christ is majestically silhouetted against a bank of dark cloud. Joos van Cleve’s Raggi triptych remains in the church of San Donato, while Giulio Romano’s Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, a masterly homage to Raphael, is still in the church of that saint.
Andrea Doria, ‘padre della patria’, was favoured by Emperor Charles V. His Villa Imperiali (Palazzo del Principe), to the west of the town, has now been sensitively restored by his successors. This is remarkable not least for the elaborate decorative scheme devised by Raphael’s former pupil Perino del Vaga, whose heroic Fall of the Giants is one of the less familiar masterpieces of Renaissance decorative painting. Portraits by Sebastiano del Piombo and Francesco Salviati and an exceptional group of Flemish tapestries suggest the artistic horizons of the family. The Doria also employed the Tuscan Montorsoli, in the church of San Matteo, and the Perugian Galeazzo Alessi.
Alessi, an architect of genius, was responsible for another Sauli commission, the vast domed church of Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano (1549–1602), which recalls Sangallo’s scheme for St Peter’s in Rome. Alessi may also have been consulted about the scheme for the Strada Nuova. Conceived in 1550, this is a canyon of palazzi built for members of the closely interrelated Genoese patriciate, Pallavicino and Spinola, Lomellino and Grimaldi, among others, bankers whose wealth was vastly augmented by their control of the silver of the Spanish empire. Garibaldi, after whom the street is now named, would not have sympathized with them.
Although Genoa had already produced a significant painter of her own, Luca Cambiaso, numerous commissions continued to be awarded to artists from elsewhere. The Crucifixion by Federico Barocci from Urbino in the cathedral is a deeply felt statement of Counter-Reformation piety, wonderfully rich in colour, while Francesco Vanni’s Last Communion of the Magdalen (Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano) is a visionary restatement of Sienese sensibility. Rubens’s youthful reaction to his experience of Italy fires his Circumcision of 1605 in the church of the Gesù, where his more mature Saint Ignatius is complemented by major altarpieces by Guido Reni and François Vouet.
Such were the painters preferred by the patricians who rushed to be painted by the young Anthony van Dyck in the early 1620s. Van Dyck set the standard of Genoese portraiture for a century, and no Genoese master of the period was immune to his influence. Yet, by the mid-seventeenth century, Genoa was both less rich and less dependent on outside talent. Castiglione’s Nativity of 1645 at San Luca, in the commercial heart of the city, is an indigenous masterpiece of enchanting originality, and would, half a century later, be balanced by a comprehensive scheme of decorative frescoes by another local master, Domenico Piola, whose numerous altarpieces in Genoese churches are consistently effective. Nonetheless, outsiders continued to find employment: the French Pierre Puget supplied two prodigious sculptures at Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano and the equally extraordinary gilt-bronze high altar at San Siro, while the Bolognese Marcantonio Franceschini had in 1714 a key role in the beautifully coordinated decoration of the church of San Filippo Neri, which represents the later baroque of Genoa at its most appealing.
Damage in the Second World War and the ruthless restoration programmes of Franco Albini at both the Palazzo Bianco and the Palazzo Rosso of the Strada Nuova mean that, despite their splendid collections, one must look elsewhere to understand secular taste in baroque Genoa. The visitor should abandon the Strada Nuova and cut down through the maze of the old city for the Palazzo Spinola, which was decorated in two phases (1614–24 and 1730–37), the latter for Maddalena Spinola di San Luca. Her suite of rooms on the second floor remains substantially intact. Then make for the Via Balbi, the second of the new roads of the city constructed between 1602 and 1620, passing the all but inaccessible Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini, to visit the Palazzo Reale, so named since its acquisition by the King of Piedmont in 1824. With twenty-five bays – as opposed to its neighbour’s fifteen – this was remodelled by Carlo Fontana for Eugenio Durazzo from 1705 onwards. Of the interiors created for the Durazzo, three are particularly memorable: the Sala del Veronese (so named for a picture which the Savoys sent to Turin) with restrained rococo decoration; the splendidly orchestrated Galleria degli Specchi, whose frames are invaded by gilded ivy; and the Anteroom beyond, with an enchanting ceiling that is the undisputable masterpiece of Valerio Castello, most appealing of the later Genoese baroque painters. The Savoys would later lay a heavy neoclassical hand on the palace, their resourceful designer Palagio Palagi unexpectedly employing an English craftsman, Henry Thomas Peters, on parquetry floors and the furniture of a bathroom. Look out from the terrace across the restored gardens towards the sopraelevata – the road which does such visual violence to the city – and the port beyond.
