A Matter of Books. Rubens and the Cultural Exchange with the Genoese Aristocracy: the case of Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale

1648: Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale, politician, one of the most influential men of Italy, a collector of unparalleled paintings even in the renowned parterre of the Superba dies in Genoa. Of minor interest from the point of view of mere economic value, but far greater as regards the possibility of offering a privileged look at the Genoese cultural context is the remarkable library of the Imperiale, which emerges with its over a thousand volumes from the archives. It is the only Genoese library to contain, in full, the book production of the Flemish philosopher Giusto Lipsio: a real collection of over twenty texts. In the same way, still very young, the Imperial had been Rubens' client, whom he had met in Genoa, most likely in the painter's first passage in the city, in 1604. If the Imperiale was in such high esteem for Rubens' paintings that two copies were immediately drawn, the same could perhaps be said for the culture that the painter (who was the same age) then brought with him. It is extraordinary to be able to detect thanks to the inventories witnessed by the documents, from the point of view of the library and not only of the artistic collection, how the influence of a complex personality such as that of the painter from Siegen could have left its mark even in the libraries of the Republic of Genova.