Ambrogio Spinola in Genoese Art

Ambrogio Spinola’s likeness and the crucial feats of his outstanding military career were at the center of a complex and effective image strategy, both while Ambrogio was alive and after his death; the results came to include extraordinary artistic masterpieces by such painters as Rubens, Van Dyck and Velazquez, widely studied internationally This paper focusses on a specific, less known group of artistic objects, the works commissioned in Genoa and for the church of Rosano (in the area of the Spinolas’ Castelnoceto fiefdom) by a small circle of family members close to Ambrogio: his sister and brother-in-law, possibly his nephew, his son Filippo. These works of art include the fresco cycle in the Villa Spinola di San Pietro (1623-1624), in which Andrea Ansaldo depicted Ambogio’s victories; silver reliefs executed in 1636, comprising the representation of the siege of Breda; the lost decoration in Palazzo Doria Spinola’s demolished gallery, of which one fragment and a few historical photographs survive; a large painting in the church of Rosano in the diocese of Tortona, where Spinola was buried. This significant production of images continued in the following centuries, including a late 18th-century depiction of Ambrogio’s apotheosis executed by Callet for Cristoforo Spinola.