Cultural itineraries.
From Romanesque to Art Nouveau style - there are many possibilities for creating an art itinerary in Liguria are. As an example, we have chosen the Baroque (as the first of the artistic itineraries that will be added in future updates). This is because it involves the whole region and allows us to focus on a period of great territorial and cultural unity in Liguria, which was above all due to the prosperity and prestige of its natural capital, Genoa. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, many Italian and North European artists were called to Genoa by the Doges and certain powerful aristocratic families, and they brought about a renewal of art based on a variety of iconographic themes: religious themes with a devotional intent, and secular themes taken from historical and mythological sources with celebratory intent. This was the foundation on which the Genoese school of painting was created, a school which had wide influence all over Europe. By means of illusionistic techniques borrowed from the theatre, architectural decoration was transformed from mere decoration into spectacle: it constitutes a system of architectural backdrops that give life to a stage peopled with mythological or biblical figures. The most knowledgeable and skilled painters worked in this three-dimensional space and, by means of new, daring techniques such as the "trompe l'oeil" effect, they played so much with reality that it is difficult to recognise false architecture, which is often more convincing than the real thing.
Throughout the seventeenth century, private clients jostled to commission the most sumptuous buildings and the churches with the most elegant decorations: it was a creative fervour that even involved smaller centres and is reflected in the rich production of altar-pieces and sculptures in the parish churches in the small towns along the coast and in the hinterland.