Man-made artistic works and figurative testimonies are closely linked to the cult and spirituality expressed by local communities: a production of high, sometimes very high, quality that accompanies the history of the Diocese is presented, according to a chronological order, in the museum rooms.
Archaeological finds from the Roman era and stone materials, collected in the evocative underground environments, illustrate the most remote history of the site. The luminous “gold backgrounds” by Barnaba da Modena and a fragment of the fresco executed in 1468 by the Lombard Cristoforo De’ Mottis for the chapel of the Marini in Cathedral exemplify painting in Liguria in the 14th and 15th centuries, while contemporary sculpture is represented by the exceptional funerary monument of Cardinal Luca Fieschi, the work of a Pisan workshop active around the mid-1300s.
The splendid Polyptych of San Lazzaro di Pietro Francesco Sacchi, the altarpiece with the Stories of the Baptist painted by Teramo Piaggio and Andrea Semino, the Pietà with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino by Agostino Bombelli document, along with other works, the evolution of figurative culture in Genoa in the first half of the 16th century. Of extraordinary charm, an embroidered altar frontal with the Lamentation on the Dead Christ, made by an unknown Flemish embroiderer around 1515.
Just beyond, we find a fine embossed, chased and partially gilded silver Repositorio, donated in 1615 to the church of San Siro by Placidia Doria, niece of the great Admiral, whose portrait dominates the base band alongside that of the donor.
On the first floor, in the two rooms whose walls preserve fragments of interesting medieval frescoes, stand out a precious Byzantine-style Staurotheca Cross and the series of German-made brass basins, embossed, chased and stamped (15th and 16th centuries).
A section dedicated to the exhibition of furnishings, vestments, and liturgical objects, presented with a scenographic setup that evokes the suggestiveness of a Baroque altar arrangement and the choreography of a procession. The Madonna of Loreto by Domenico Fiasella and the imposing canvases by Gregorio De Ferrari, Transit of Saint Scholastica and Tobias Buries the Dead, finally, constitute magnificent examples of the great Genovese artistic season.
A very rich heritage of works of art that attests to the deep Christian tradition and the splendor of a Republic that, in 1637, wanted to crown the Virgin Mary as “Queen of the City,” as depicted just beyond in the evocative 18th-century frescoes of the upper ring of the Cloister.
A section dedicated to the exhibition of furnishings, vestments, and liturgical objects, presented with a scenographic setup that evokes the suggestiveness of a Baroque altar arrangement and the choreography of a procession. The Madonna of Loreto by Domenico Fiasella and the imposing canvases by Gregorio De Ferrari, Transit of Saint Scholastica and Tobias Buries the Dead, finally, constitute magnificent examples of the great Genovese artistic season.
A very rich heritage of works of art that attests to the deep Christian tradition and the splendor of a Republic that, in 1637, wanted to crown the Virgin Mary “Queen of the City”, as depicted just beyond in the evocative 18th-century frescoes of the upper ring of the Cloister.
