The exhibition, which can be visited from Friday 14 May 2021, is hosted in the historic rooms of the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola and is the result of a larger project, called "Open Vicoli", funded by the Compagnia di San Paolo and started in 2019.

Open Vicoli was born with the aim of creating a network between the numerous and different associations of a social nature in the historic center and the Genoese museums and has also materialized through projects such as the one presented on this occasion. The exhibition "Make me bigger", born from the collaboration between the National Galleries of Palazzo Spinola and the San Marcellino Association, puts in dialogue the works created by his painting laboratory with the ancient portraits preserved in the Pellicceria residence and made by the major artists Italians and Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The event aims to reflect on the comparison, ironic and playful, between the ancient effigies desired by the Genoese nobles to flaunt their role in society and those created by those who, unfortunately, are often confined to the margins. The doges and the Genoese aristocrats, in fact, had themselves portrayed to show everyone the social status they held. They were not interested in a portrait that described their thoughts or their true character, but they wanted the wealth and power they had in society to be evident. On the contrary, they wanted to make sure that this social weight was always evident, in a sort of competition between nobles for who mattered most.