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In 1530 Giovanni Giacomo transferred his studio to Genoa, where, from 1532, he collaborated with Niccolò da Corte. The partnership was formalized in 1534, when Giovanni Giacomo, his son Guglielmo and da Corte set up a studio together, and it continued until 1537 when da Corte went to Spain and Guglielmo presumably went to Rome. The most important commissions undertaken by this partnership were the baldacchino in the chapel of San Giovanni Battista (1530-32) and the funerary monument to Giuliano Cybo, Bishop of Agrigento (both Genoa Cathedral).
The Cybo chapel contains an altar dedicated to Sts Peter and Paul (Altar of the Apostles). The monument is composed as a serliana with the seated figure of Christ in the central niche, flanked by over life-size figures of saints and prophets. The seven figures are conceived as a dramatic unity. In a narrow central niche are St Peter and St Paul, with, between them, the Redeemer blessing the effigy, which originally projected at the front. At the sides, between paired columns, are figures of St Jerome and St John the Baptist, each crouching in a low niche, and at the outer edges, in front of the paired columns, are Abraham, pointing rhetorically backwards to the central niche, and Moses with the tablets of the law.
The sculptures are unequal - like most works of their kind in Liguria and Lombardy they are collaborative - but one of them, the Abraham, is more powerful and more resilient than the rest, and this is due to Guglielmo della Porta. The upper and lower faces are decorated with reliefs depicting the Virtues, funeral symbols and scenes from the lives of the saints and prophets. Before the monument is placed the kneeling figure of Giuliano Cybo, which was removed from its original situation after the completion of the tomb.
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