Paolo Clerici, an ex-president of Italian shipowners' association Confitarma, has been collecting works of art related to the maritime world since the 1970s.
Now he has made around 60 of his 250 paintings available to the public.
The private collection has gone on permanent display at the Galata Museo del Mare in Italy, the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean.
The museum is in the historical heart of Genoa, which Clerici sees as the “city to which I have always been deeply linked and where our entrepreneurial story began”.
A charitable foundation established by Clerici will fund the project.
The Navigare nell’Arte exhibition displays works by Adam, Craffonara, De Simone, Klodic, Mohrmann and Roullet, as well as from modern Italian artists Locci and Sambuy.
