Gli affreschi di Bernardo Castello nella loggia di Villa Imperiale a Genova: la riscoperta di un programma culturale per immagini

The frescoes painted by Bernardo Castello into the marvellous vault of the Loggia in Villa Imperiale in Sampierdarena, near Genoa, called “The Beauty” for the richness of the garden and the building’s decoration, are one of his masterpieces before he moved to Rome in 1603, to paint in St. Peter Basilica and for the Giustiniani family in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and in the villa in Bassano Romano. Nevertheless, for four hundred years, we lost the memory of their real meanings. This paper aims to reconstruct the artistical moment lived by Bernardo, even enlightening some spots around his works in Rome and the legacy he brought back in Genoa; the cultural context in which he and Marcello Sparzo (for the stucco works) received the patronage by the Imperiale family to decorate the vault of the Loggia and to give finally – trough the inspection of Imperiale’s library – the correct and significant explanation of the chosen iconography.