The exhibition brings together some of the most important works of art from the palace formerly of Eugenio, Gerolamo and Marcellino Durazzo, the present-day Palazzo Reale. These had been dispersed in the first forty years of the 19th century. The Durazzo Collection was one of the last great examples of broad-scale collecting by Genoese aristocracy, a reflection of an important phase in the social, economic, political and artistic history in the city. In fact, while it is true that for much of the local aristocracy, the 18th century was a period of decline, for the Durazzo family it was undoubtedly the century of their apogee, the period of maximum expansion of the finance business and, consequently, of their patronage.
The history of the dispersal of a major portion of the Durazzo Collection (the nucleus with  most of the works is still kept at Palazzo Reale, owned by the Italian State) begins in the Napoleonic period and continues into the first half of the 19th century, when the palace was purchased by the Savoy. The royal House then transferred some of the most important pieces to Turin to enrich the new Galleria Sabauda, built in those years by Carlo Alberto to the glory of the Kingdom of Sardinia: the Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee by Veronese, the Trinity by Tintoretto, Rubens’ Susanna in the Bath, Van Dyck’s Holy Family definitively left the salons of the palace in Via Balbi.
The Marchesi Durazzo, nonetheless, hadn’t sold many works that they transferred to their new Genoese palace in Piazza della Meridiana. These were mostly portraits and historic paintings tied to the memory of their family. Even this group included masterpieces by Van Dyck, Mulinaretto, Domenico Parodi. By reconstructing the cultural interests and the relations of the family’s most important exponents, the show presents examples of the dispersed works. The layout develops in the court theatre of the same palace in which the Durazzo had collected paintings, busts, books, prints, decorative art works: the Teatro del Falcone. Visitors may once again enjoy the possibility of seeing one of the collections that, in the years of the Grand Tour, had been one of the most important destinations in the Italian leg of the journey for generations of connoisseurs, young artists and travellers.

14 July - 3 October 2004. Untill 7 November
Museo di Palazzo Reale, Teatro del Falcone - Via Balbi 10
Tuesday-sunday: 9.00 am-7.00 pm
Closed monday

tel. / fax 010 2710272
lucaleoncini@libero.it
www.palazzorealegenova.it

www.palazzoducale.genova.it/durazzo

€ 6.00 full price
€ 5.00 reduced price
€ 3.00 school groups

Relating activities
Workshop:
“I Durazzo di Palazzo Reale. Personaggi e passioni di un ramo dimenticato”
Salone da Ballo Museo di Palazzo Reale
30 September 2004

     Entry included in the Genova04 Card