Benvenuti al Sud. Il gusto dei genovesi nel Regno di Napoli: materiali di ricerca

The matter of Genoeses in the Viceregno (‘Kingdom of Naples’) is a question which has lent itself to multiple critical readings, as highlighted by historians, in particular during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. As "Hombres de negocios", involved to build up financial strategies, they also proved to be motivated by a social ambition, satisfied through the acquisition of fiefdoms in Puglia, Basilicata, Campania and Calabria. In order to obtain noble titles, this practice was also em- phasized by Rubens in his atlas dedicated to the Palaces of Genoa, when he described the sumptuous residence of the “signor principe di Gerace” (‘Prince of Gerace’). As regard to the historical- artistic implications of this phenomenon - and net of pioneering investigations centred on Naples or on the Sicilian side -, there is still a lack of critical readings of what we can surely define complex forms of patronage and collecting, projected onto the Viceregno. The aim is therefore to trace, through some exemplary cases, the perimeter of the wealth of relationships - not only in economic terms - between the Genoese aristocrats and their southern holdings.