Genoa, restoration of Rubens' spectacular Circumcision to start soon

Significant financial resources are arriving for the restoration of the Circumcision by Pieter Paul Rubens (Siegen, 1577 - Antwerp, 1642), a 1605 masterpiece by the Flemish artist that hangs on the high altar of the Gesù church in Genoa. The news comes exactly one year after the Regione Liguria announced the restoration. It is an endowment of 30,000 euros allocated at the behest of President Giovanni Toti and added to the previous 30,000 euros that the Region had already made available, for a total of 60,000 euros that will be used to carry out a conservative intervention that will ensure its full state of health and greater enjoyment. The resources were allocated through a provision of the bill connected to the 2024 budget that grants an additional contribution to the House of Jesus to carry out a restoration that is as important as it is complex.

The Circumcision is a monumental canvas measuring 492 by 277 centimeters, placed on the high altar between two large black marble columns transported on purpose, in 1605 itself, from the quarry in Framura. The iconography of the Circumcision , a rite during which each Jewish child is given a name, was central to the catechesis of the Jesuit Order. In Genoa the Society of Jesus became very powerful after 1545 and it is no coincidence that it was linked to one of the most influential families of the Genoese patriciate, the Pallavicino.

Located in Piazza Matteotti in the heart of the city, a stone’s throw from the Ducal Palace, the Jesuit Church was built in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with funds provided by the sons of Agostino Pallavicino: 400,000 gold scudi to build the new Baroque jewel box and the adjoining Casa Professa of the Jesuit Fathers. Agostino Pallavicino’s sons include Marcello, a Jesuit and overseer of the entire operation; the poet Giulio, whose portrait by Rubens is featured in the Ducale exhibition; and Nicolò Pallavicino, the principal banker of the Duke of Mantua, Vincenzo I Gonzaga whose court painter Rubens was.

The restoration is also accompanied by an initiative of the Pallavicino ETS Foundation, which is supporting the cost of researching and publishing a volume on the history of the Circumcision, one of the most important works found on Ligurian soil. The volume will be co-edited by Anna Orlando, creator of the painting’s restoration project, and Nils Büttner. The Genoese scholar and her German colleague have been chosen, the region points out, “both by virtue of their specific technical expertise and for the international stature they hold in the field of research on Rubens in Genoa, so as to enhance the relevance of the initiative beyond local borders.” The book will be published in Italian and English and will be distributed by Electa. The contents of the volume, which also contain information on the material and stylistic analysis of the work, have already been made available to the forming committee of experts that is necessary for the initiation and operations of the restoration. The committee was set up by the Liguria Region and coordinated by Luca Parodi, head of the Culture Sector of the Liguria Region, and is expected to include, in addition to Anna Orlando, a representative of the Regional Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture and one from the Superintendence , as well as the legal representative of the House of Jesus. The book enjoys the patronage of the Centrum Rubeninaum in Antwerp and that of the Region of Liguria, and the Pallavicino Foundation will work in the coming months in order to build consensus and participation in this operation by other cultural bodies and institutions as well.

“The culture item in our regional budget is one of the most important, with 12 million euros in 2024 invested for our cultural realities, and in this figure there is a new funding of 30,000 euros to be allocated to the restoration of the work of Rubens’ Circumcision for a total of 60,000 euros,” explains the region’s cultural policy coordinator Jessica Nicolini. “All this stems from the need to safeguard an exceptional and particularly significant asset for the history of Liguria’s artistic heritage, which, once returned to its place on the high altar of the Gesù Church, will be more usable by the entire community. Moreover, the decision of the Pallavicino Foundation to flank the restoration project of Rubens’ Genoese masterpiece with its own initiatives honors and gratifies us, making it evident once again how the interventions of a public body can trigger virtuous mechanisms with important cultural spin-offs.”

“This publishing project puts the Foundation in the forefront of private contribution to the enhancement of public cultural heritage,” says lawyer Daniela Anselmi, vice president of the Pallavicino ETS Foundation, “and it does so with a very specific intervention that links the history of the city to that of the family of our President and Founder, Prince Domenico Pallavicino. In this way we can also present ourselves to an international audience with a specificity of our own, based on the historical and artistic patronage prominence of the Prince’s ancestors, among the most important and enterprising patrician patrons in the Genoa of the ”Siglo de Los Genoves,“ between the 16th and 17th centuries.”

“It is an honor and a joy for us to be able to work on this volume and on the whole project originated by Regione Liguria by being able to put our expertise and credibility in the scientific field at the service of public knowledge,” says Anna Orlando, creator of the project. “The stature as a masterpiece of Rubens’ 1605 ”Circumcision“ is an established fact, but behind masterpieces always lie stories already told and others yet to be revealed. The idea of giving continuity to the work done for the 2022 exhibition takes shape with this new research effort, and the choice of the same publisher of the catalog of that successful exhibition also stems from the desire to demonstrate, as with restoration also with a book, that what an exhibition sows on the territory does not end with the closure of the exhibition event.”

Genoa, restoration of Rubens' spectacular Circumcision to start soon

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