Description
The Galleria di Palazzo Rosso is the Baroque home of the Brignole-Sale family on Via Garibaldi in Genoa, preserved with its frescoed rooms, furniture and family picture collection: portraits by van Dyck, and canvases by Guercino, Reni, Veronese and Dürer.
It owes its name to the red of its façade, where lion heads crown the windows: the lion is on the family coat of arms, rampant beneath a plum tree, brignòle in Genoese. Together with Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi it forms the Strada Nuova Museums.
The most famous rooms are on the second piano nobile. The four Rooms of the Seasons, frescoed by Gregorio De Ferrari and his father-in-law Domenico Piola from 1679 onwards, are among the high points of Genoese Baroque.
In Spring, Venus and Cupid seduce Mars; in Summer, Ceres reigns with ears of wheat; in Autumn, a young Bacchus sits beside Ariadne. Winter is a boy warming himself at a brazier amid scenes of carnival and hunting.
The Loggia of Diana is a small coup de théâtre: the painted sham architecture looks like a palace in ruins, from whose sky the goddess of the Moon descends towards the shepherd Endymion, asleep beside the door.
The highlights of the picture gallery are the portraits by van Dyck, including the equestrian portrait of Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale and that of his wife Paolina Adorno. There are also Guercino's Dying Cleopatra, Reni's Saint Sebastian and Bernardo Strozzi's The Cook.
Higher up, the Miradore is the palace's belvedere: from up there the view sweeps over the old town and the whole city.
The palace was built between 1671 and 1677 for two brothers, Rodolfo and Gio Francesco Brignole-Sale. Rather than split the house into two halves side by side, the architect gave each of them an entire piano nobile.
In 1874 the last heir, Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, gave it to the city together with its collections, to add to Genoa's prestige and benefit.
Bombs in the Second World War destroyed the great fresco in the main hall, Phaeton before Apollo: today only the sketch remains. In the 1950s Franco Albini rebuilt the museum and designed the famous octagonal staircase, hung from steel tie rods and with a leather handrail.
Don't miss
• Rooms of the Seasons.
• Loggia of Diana.
• Portraits by van Dyck.
• Miradore.
• Albini's octagonal staircase.
Did you know?
• The inlaid parquet in Anton Giulio II's bedroom, from around 1705, was a novelty in Italy at the time: no others are known from those years.
• Anton Giulio II's monogram appears ten times in his small apartment.
It owes its name to the red of its façade, where lion heads crown the windows: the lion is on the family coat of arms, rampant beneath a plum tree, brignòle in Genoese. Together with Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi it forms the Strada Nuova Museums.
The most famous rooms are on the second piano nobile. The four Rooms of the Seasons, frescoed by Gregorio De Ferrari and his father-in-law Domenico Piola from 1679 onwards, are among the high points of Genoese Baroque.
In Spring, Venus and Cupid seduce Mars; in Summer, Ceres reigns with ears of wheat; in Autumn, a young Bacchus sits beside Ariadne. Winter is a boy warming himself at a brazier amid scenes of carnival and hunting.
The Loggia of Diana is a small coup de théâtre: the painted sham architecture looks like a palace in ruins, from whose sky the goddess of the Moon descends towards the shepherd Endymion, asleep beside the door.
The highlights of the picture gallery are the portraits by van Dyck, including the equestrian portrait of Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale and that of his wife Paolina Adorno. There are also Guercino's Dying Cleopatra, Reni's Saint Sebastian and Bernardo Strozzi's The Cook.
Higher up, the Miradore is the palace's belvedere: from up there the view sweeps over the old town and the whole city.
The palace was built between 1671 and 1677 for two brothers, Rodolfo and Gio Francesco Brignole-Sale. Rather than split the house into two halves side by side, the architect gave each of them an entire piano nobile.
In 1874 the last heir, Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, gave it to the city together with its collections, to add to Genoa's prestige and benefit.
Bombs in the Second World War destroyed the great fresco in the main hall, Phaeton before Apollo: today only the sketch remains. In the 1950s Franco Albini rebuilt the museum and designed the famous octagonal staircase, hung from steel tie rods and with a leather handrail.
Don't miss
• Rooms of the Seasons.
• Loggia of Diana.
• Portraits by van Dyck.
• Miradore.
• Albini's octagonal staircase.
Did you know?
• The inlaid parquet in Anton Giulio II's bedroom, from around 1705, was a novelty in Italy at the time: no others are known from those years.
• Anton Giulio II's monogram appears ten times in his small apartment.