California Italian Studies

This article considers the "agency of images" in "mediating identity" of the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria (1466-1560).  Doria was represented in an extraordinary group of portraits as an ancient Roman sea captain and nude Neptune, god of the seas.  These historical and mythological portraits are considered in relation to Charles V's Hapsburg Augustan imperial iconography and ancient Roman ideas about the Mediterranean Sea, mare nostrum.