Palazzo Gio Vincenzo Imperiale

History

Adjacent to the disappeared Palazzo Spinola Doria and dominating almost the whole of Campetto, the palace was built around 1560 by the celebrated artist Giovan Battista Castello known as il Bergamasco for Vincenzo Imperiale, as is written on the architrave of the main portalː VINCENTIUS IMPERIALIS MICHAELIS FILIUS 1560. His son Gio Giacomo, who had it in fideicommissum, commissioned the extension towards Soziglia to a design by Andrea Ansaldo, and the construction of the rectifilo that connects it to San Lorenzo.

Included from 1576 in the first list of rolls of Genoa with Vincenzo's heirs, he remained there until that of 1664. Since, in 1584, Gio Giacomo Imperiale — elected in 1617—1619 doge of the Republic of Genoa — opened the new 'imperial road' (today Scurreria la Nuova), a small part of the façade is, together with the portal, visible from Piazza San Lorenzo according to a perspective not envisaged by the Castle, which imagined a sumptuous façade to respond to a foreshortened view from below upwards.

He then bequeathed it to his son, Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale, a famous man of letters who housed one of the city's most famous art collections, divided between the palace and the villa in Sampierdarena, known as Villa Imperiale «La Bellezza». Among the most famous pieces were the Portrait of Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale, by Antoon van Dyck (1626), now in New York, National Gallery of Art, and the Portrait of the Marchioness Brigida Spinola Doria, second wife of Vincenzo Imperiale, by Peter Paul Rubens, now in Washington, National Gallery of Art.

The palace was damaged in the naval bombardment of 1684 and more seriously in the aerial bombardment of 1942.

Description

The façade, unanimously attributed to Bergamasco, presents clear references to the Roman Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, a masterpiece by Peruzzi. Like this one, it curves to follow the irregular course of the piazza, and has a portal on the ground floor with columns and frieze of Doric order, which opens onto an ashlar roof.

In contrast to the sobriety of the ground and first piano nobile, on the upper floors a lively decoration unfolds, with an unusual and anticlassical repertoire, where stucco fantasies clearly prevail over the frescoed backgrounds. On the second piano nobile elongated female herms in profile support alternating triangular and ribbed tympanums resting on curved volutes reminiscent of Ionic capitals. On the upper floor, the elaborate stuccowork reaches its acme in the window frames, in the demonic, lion, zoomorphic and winged masks, and in the rounded putti seated on garlands, stuccowork that echoes the elaborate ornamentation of the famous Francis I Gallery – Fontainebleau Gallery, here unexpectedly bringing it back to an external elevation. On the last level, in the theory of herms placed alternately in frontal view and in profile, the fantasy tends towards the monstrous grotesque.

The Greek deities depicted in fresco between the windows follow a cryptic magical-alchemical symbology, inspired by Hermeticism (philosophy) and the ancient text of the Picatrix. The most prominent figure above the main portal is Jupiter, with thunderbolts in his fist, seated on the eagle, the symbol of the Imperial household. This is followed by the Three Graces, Diana, Mars, Apollo, Venus. On the other side, the deities of the sublunar world, Ceres, Proserpine, and Hebe. The frescoes are considered the late work of Ansaldo, from the third decade of the 17th century. …