Personification of the Republic in Genoa. Before and after Cesare Ripa's Iconologia

In the early modern age, the Republic of Genoa made use of many different images, drawing on the vast repertoire of objects and attributes that had come to be associated with the city, in order to represent itself (politically and symbolically), both within and beyond the boundaries of its territories. During the sixteenth century, because of some distinctive, longstanding features of the Genoese political system – such as the weakness of central authority and the alternation of top government positions among the aristocratic families, in whose hands most of the power resided – the visual representation of civic pride focused primarily on selected episodes from the city’s history or – more frequently – on the glorification of Genoa’s past heroes, such as Guglielmo Embriaco. Those subjects were common both in private and public decorative cycles, while the personifications of the city appeared less often, and the iconography used in them was inconsistent in permanent art works until it found a new codification in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia. By contrast, the representation of Genoa as a female figure – with heterogeneous, non-standardised attributes – enjoyed a more prominent role in ephemeral triumphal arches built for important entries or ceremonies, obviously with a political purpose.