Reviews #2

Superb line: prints and drawings from Genoa 1500-1800 (5 Oct 2023 – 1 Apr 2024)

British Museum, LondoN

Superb line: prints and drawings from Genoa 1500-1800 is the latest free exhibition to be housed in the British Museum’s Prints and drawings room (Room 90). Composed of some fifty works selected from the museum’s rich collection of Italian works on paper the exhibition charts 300 years of Genoese graphic history.

The prosperous port city, nicknamed ‘La Superba’ by Petrach, spawned a number of well-known artists, including Luca Cambiaso, Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and a greater number of lesser-known ones, including Giovanni Battista Paggi, Giulio Bruno and Clemente Bocciardo, all of whom are represented in the exhibition whose focus, in terms of subject matter, is primarily religious and mythological over landscape or portrait.

As a commercial trading centre, Genoa’s artistic developments were closely linked to its ability to import talent. Luminaries such as Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony van Dyck and Jean-Honoré Fragonard all spent time in the city and the links between these visitors and the city’s native artists are an underlying theme.

Arranged chronologically the exhibition takes its cue from the arrivals of Perino del Vaga and Baccio Bandinelli in 1528. Both artists worked under commission for projects relating to Andrea Doria, Genoa’s leading citizen, and Bandinelli’s depiction of Doria as Neptune makes for a powerful marker of Genoese ambition.

Perino’s practice of making rapid preliminary drawings was adopted by Cambiaso and the artists of his school, who are represented through three characteristic works. The shadow of van Dyck, who is represented by a page from his Italian Sketchbook, is evident in the drawing style of Orazio de Ferrari and to a lesser extent in the oil sketches of Castiglione. Genoese artistic dynasties such as the Piola and Castello families are also on display, their drawings exemplifying the distinctive styles of Genoese draughtsmanship and autonomous artistic developments that occurred over the chosen period.

The exhibition presents a perfect opportunity to see works that are rarely on display from an artistic centre whose renown is often overshadowed by its rivals, Venice, Florence and Rome.