The Palaces
4. Spinola, Tomaso salita S. Caterina, 3
Palazzo Spinola, Tommaso; Passagno
Situated between the old Piazza degli Spinola di Luccoli and Piazza dei Della Rovere, it was build to a design by Gian Battista Castello (1558 - 1561) for Tomaso Spinola. Castello's fully Mannerist “signature”" can be seen in the very fine design of the portal with female herms, excuted by Giacomo Ponzello, and Pompeo Bianchi (1560), and in the facade in the imaginative stuccoed and frescoed quadratura, similar to that in Palazzo Imperiale Campetto (1555 -1560) and Palazzo Lomellini in Strada Nuova (1563). Another obvious reference is the triforium; a curtain of the three arches on the ground floor and transparent partitions between entrance hall and stairs, the same as the solution chosen for Tobia Pallavicini’s palace in Strada Nuova (1558), where two diverging flights of stairs provide a theatrical backdrop.
The interior is richly frescoed from the entrance hall to the second floor rawing rooms (Heroes on Parnassus” by Luca Cambiaso and similar subject uncertainly attribuited to Andrea Semino; Magnani 1995, 118). The entrance hall in particular presents “Andromeda naked in front of the Monster” and, in the vault above the entrance to the stairs, “Andromeda welcoming Perseus the liberator” Listed among the property of Pessagno family in the 18th century they still owned it at the end of the 19th and now is a private residence.
