Two masterpieces by Bartolomeo Guidobono enrich the collection of the National Gallery of Liguria in Genoa

Two masterpieces by Bartolomeo Guidobono (Savona, 1654 - Turin, 1709) are the most recent acquisitions of the National Gallery of Liguria in Genoa, located in Palazzo Spinola. The works were acquired for the Genoese museum during 2019 by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. They are two biblical couples, Giale and Sisara, and Samson and Delilah, two monumental canvases, depicting episodes from the Old Testament, placed in the new room on the first mezzanine.

Guidobono is one of the most interesting artists of late seventeenth-century Genoese painting, but until now he was not yet in the collections of Palazzo Spinola. As indicated on the occasion of their presentation in the itinerary of the exhibition Genoa in the Baroque Age, organized in 1992, the works were purchased by the last owner from Villa Spinola Dufour in Cornigliano (a suburb of Genoa), where they decorated one of the main rooms. Their provenance constitutes a decidedly relevant element, because the villa belonged in the 18th century to Maddalena Doria Spinola, wife of the doge Nicolò Spinola and owner of the Spinola di Pellicceria palace, donated in 1958 by the marquises Franco and Paolo to become the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola and home of the Galleria Nazionale della Liguria. In the palace’s archives are preserved numerous documents the villa, including several inventories.

In the oldest of these inventories, dating from 1720, eight paintings are noted in the main hall of the summer residence without specification of subject or size. An identical number of works were still on the walls of the same room in the 1808 inventory. A link between the two monumental compositions by Bartolomeo Guidobono and the Spinola family is therefore more than likely, also in view of the fact that the villa in Cornigliano became the destination of constant sojourns by members of the family: during the eighteenth century, several interventions to update the decoration by Francesco Maria Spinola, son of Maddalena, and his consort Maria Giulia Fieschi are indeed noted in the documents kept at the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola. Limmobile was later inherited by his son Paolo Francesco Spinola, who took care of its arrangement by commissioning various furniture and paintings according to the updated classicist taste of the late eighteenth century. Later the building was sold to the Dufour, a renowned Genoese family who chose it as their home.

The canvases were published by art historian Ezia Gavazza, a specialist in seventeenth-century Genoese art, who, documenting their direct provenance from a room in a Genoese villa, highlighted the relevant compositional quality, with “the figures, at large sizes [...] projected onto the plane to totally invade the scene,” and the quality of execution, characterized by the “precious rendering of a chromaticism conducted on the richness of tones in the background, in the luminous shadow of barely perceptible spaces, together with details of refined decorative richness.”

Below are images of the two works.

Bartolomeo Guidobono, Samson and Delilah

Bartolomeo Guidobono, Jael and Sisara

Two masterpieces by Bartolomeo Guidobono enrich the collection of the National Gallery of Liguria in Genoa

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