In Genoa, the spring of 2026 will have the face of Van Dyck “the European” – Genoa

Genova – In Genoa, spring of 2026 will be dominated by Van Dick. The painter of Antwerp will be in the Ligurian city with an exhibition that will put his career in the spotlight, through a story that will explore the most important issues of his production to family to power, from fashionable friends, from children to holy.
From March 20 to July 19, 2026, the rooms of the apartment of the Doge van Palazzo Ducale will be the refined setting of the route Van Dyck the European Championship. The journey from a genius from Antwerp to Genoa to Londoninserted in an ambitious program of the municipality of Genoa, aimed at involving all institutions and protagonists of the cultural offer of the city.
Produced by the municipality of Genoa and Palazzo Ducale Foundation for Culture, published by Anna Orlando and Katlijne van der Sigelen, the path will embrace a hundred works, including paintings and drawings from the most important European museums and prestigious foundations and international collections, as well as from Italian museums. For the occasion, the Genuese Civic Collections will present a selection of works that offer the starting point for suggestive dialogues with European works, which at the same time implement a path of improving the other paintings by Van Dyck and its Nordic contemporaries who stay in the rooms of Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco.

Antoon van Dyck, Ritratto di Jacob de Witte, 1628-1629 © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp

In addition to the paintings and drawings of the Flemish master, other artists are present with sculptures, objects, engravings and other artifacts. The exhibition, which will be inaugurated 29 years after the course Van Dyck in Genoa. Great painting and collecting exposed to Palazzo Ducale and 8 years after the most recent exhibition focus Van Dyck and his friendsHost in Palazzo della Meridiana in Genoa, will concentrate on the Italian period, and in particular on the Genoese season of Van Dyck. The retrospective, which will open up for a more international appearance, will bring the same amount of work at different times of the painter’s career, in Flanders, his home country and then in London, where he worked for King Charles I of England.

The visitor is accompanied on a path that will continue with themes.
From the Anversa training phase we will continue with the period of defining the poetics of the painter and his style in Italy and Genoa, to the metamorphosis that coincides with the arrival in London. Special attention will be aimed at the extraordinary works that have been carried out in his Genoese stays – interspersed with other journeys for a few weeks, between 1621 and 1627 – from which the cultural and collecting climate of the time will arise in the excellent. Iharia Bonacossa, director of Palazzo Ducale, selects a series of contemporary works of art that are included in the course.

“Genoa – says that the President of Palazzo Ducale Foundation for Culture, Beppe Costa – was not only an international economic financial power in the seventeenth century, but also a cultural” square “where the greatest painters of the time, a” city of miracles “to place it with the historian Fernand Braudel was the nerve of this Palwondrijke. Organizing the genius of one of the artists who were the most of Dyck lived in Genua Guest of the City and precisely for the Genuees, he creates most Italian cloths. Genoa hosted in the rooms of the Doge apartment in 2022 “.

Antoon van Dyck, Christ Portacroce, 1618-1620 © Genova Museums of Strada Nuova-Palazzo Rosso

As happened for colleague Rubens in 2022, Van Dyck will also have the Van Dyck 2026 network, conceived and edited by Anna Orlando, a carousel of exhibitions, focus, routes that will involve the city at 360 degrees. The program will embrace at least six collateral exhibitions, in the final phase, at different locations: Strada Nuova Museums, Academy Ligustics, Diocesan Museum, Palazzo della Meridiana, Palazzo Nicolosio Lomellino and Palazzo Gio.

“The presentation of Van Dyck not only to the Genuese, but also to the general public, nationally and international, it means that it makes a real master of the European painting better known – explains the curator Anna Orlando – is sitting in the center of this project, not only as the seat of the exhibition, but also because this brilliant artist has his art in such a way. Thickness of the project, it was my concern to activate that the City Participation Mechanism of the City will see different collateral exhibitions and many events for a network that, according to the successful model, experience with Rubens in 2022, the months/summer 2026 will make a large stage of great art for everyone “.

To support the trustees will be an international honorary scientific committee, consisting of nine Italian and foreign scientists. The catalog welcomes the contributions of the members of the committee and other scientists who enrich the offer to the public and the scientific community through in -depth -nessays and maps of the works on display.