Bernardo Castello

In this large and characteristic drawing, Castello adapts a composition developed by Guido Reni in a painting that he produced for the Barberini family, known today through an engraving by Johann Friedrich Greuter published in Giovanni Battista Ferrari's De Florum Cultura. In this work, an allegory of the Americas is depicted gifting seeds to Neptune - seeds with which the flowers of the Barberini gardens would be planted. The original painting is evidently no longer extant, but Castello possibly encountered it in Rome during his sojourn there. Here he has expanded the image and reworked the iconography. While similar representations such as Neptune handing the crown to Athens, to Britannia, or Alexander the Great are known, the presence of ships in the background and the additional allegorical figures on land suggest that the soldier receiving the crown is an allegorical representation of Genoa.