Ghisolfi Portrait Old master Oil on canvas17th Century Architecture Italy Art

1650-1699

Sixteenth-century Lombard school Workshop of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto (Brescia, c. 1498 – 1554) St Jerome Oil on canvas 81 x 68 cm. - In a fine antique frame 98 x...

Giovan Bernardo Lama (Naples, 1536-1600 ca.) The Pietà oil on panel 51 x 41 cm. Antique frame (defects and faults) 66 x 56 cm. Observing the exquisite quality and the elegance ...

Ippolito Scarsella, known as Lo Scarsellino (Ferrara, c. 1550 - 1620) workshop Holy Family with the Infant St John oil on arched panel 46 x 29 cm. in a small temple frame 75 x 55 cm This interesting work shows us one of the most sought-after iconographic subjects in the Christian tradition, presented here according to an ancient and proven scheme. We see the Virgin, majestic, in the centre of the scene while holding a chubby child, who is offering a small bird to the young St John (tradition has it that it is a goldfinch, one of the symbols of the passion of Christ) to be caressed. Completing the Holy Family, we can see Saint Joseph in the shadows, apart from the loving everyday scene depicted in the foreground, calmly leaning on his walking stick. Regarding the stylistic characteristics of this small panel, it is easy to recognise the influence of 16th and 17th century Emilian painting, which leads us to confirm its traditional attribution to Ippolito Scarsella (circa 1550 - 1620) from Ferrara, undoubtedly one of the most important artists of this pictorial context. It could very well be a trial sketch...

Jan van Gelder, Italianised as Giovanni Vangheldri (Antwerp 1621 – Modena 1685) Portrait of the Duchess Vittoria Farnese d'Este (Parma, 1618 – Modena, 1649) wife of Francesco I d'E...

Provenance: S. Spinelli Collection, Florence; their sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, July 11-14, 1928, lot 112 (unsold); reoffered Galleria Luigi Bellini, Florence, April 23-26, 1934, lot 132, as manner of Baldassare Peruzzi Dr. Giacomo Ancona, Florence, 1930s, and after 1939, San Francisco; thence by descent to his son: Mario Ancona, San Francisco; thence by descent to his children: Mario Ancona III and Victoria Ancona, San Francisco, until 1995; thence to: Phyllis Ancona Green, widow of Mario Ancona, Los Angeles (1995-2012) Literature: Donato Sanminiatelli, Domenico Beccafumi. Milan 1967, p. 170 (under paintings attributed to Beccafumi) Among the precious survivors of Renaissance secular paintings for domestic interiors are several unusual and particularly attractive panels painted in Siena at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. These paintings depict exemplary figures from antiquity—heroes or heroines, as well as allegorical, literary, and mythological figures. For the most part, these panels have survived in groups of three, although it is possible that some of these works were painted either as part of larger series or as individual projects. One such trio by Beccafumi consists of two paintings now at the National Gallery, London (Marcia and Tanaquil) and a third in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome (Cornelia). These were commissioned around 1517–1519 for the bedroom of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci in Siena and were most likely placed together as elements in the wall decoration (spalliere) or installed above the back of a bench or cassapanca. Another, earlier (ca. 1495–1500), set of three—Guidoccio Cozzarelli’s Hippo, Camilla, and Lucretia (Private Collection, Siena) survives with its original wooden framework—a kind of secular triptych. Judith, Sophonisba, and Cleopatra in the collection of the Monte dei Paschi, Siena, are by an anonymous artist close to Beccafumi called the “Master of the Chigi-Saracini Heroines.” Girolamo di Benvenuto’s Cleopatra, Tuccia, and Portia are dispersed (homeless, Prague, Chambery), and Brescianino’s Faith, Hope, and Charity are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. The present painting first appeared in the Spinelli sale in Florence in 1934, at which time it was sold with two panels of identical size and format. Each was catalogued as being by the “manner of Baldassare Peruzzi” and of unidentified subject. Of these, the painting depicting a male figure turned to the right has recently reappeared in a private Italian collection, while the location of the third work, portraying a cloaked figure turned three-quarters left, remains unknown. Our panel depicts the allegorical figure of Fortune. Here she is represented in typical fashion as a nude female figure balanced on a wheel (sometimes called the Rota Fortunae), her billowing drapery indicating that she is as changeable as the wind. The appearance of the Virgin and Child in the cloud at the upper right is an unusual addition to the iconography. The subjects of the two pendant male...

Provenance: Dr. James Henry Lancashire, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, by 1925; probably by descent to: Private Collection, Cumberland Foreside, Maine, until 2018 This unpublished panel is a characteristic work of the Master of the Apollo and Daphne Legend, an anonymous Florentine painter in the circle of Bartolommeo di Giovanni, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Sandro Botticelli. The artistic personality of the Master of the Apollo and Daphne Legend was independently recognized by Everett Fahy and Federico Zeri at roughly the same moment in time. Fahy originally dubbed this artist the Master of the Ryerson Panels but later adopted Zeri’s name for the artist, which derives from his eponymous works from the Samuel H. Kress collection (Figs. 1-2). Fahy posited that the artist was most likely a pupil of Ghirlandaio active from roughly 1480 to 1510, and that he may be identifiable with one of Ghirlandaio’s documented pupils to whom no works have been securely attributed, such as Niccolò Cieco, Jacopo dell’Indaco, or Baldino Baldinetti. The present painting was first attributed to this master by Everett Fahy in 1989, who became aware of its existence only after publishing his definitive studies on the artist. The surviving body of work by the Master of the Apollo and Daphne Legend is largely composed of series of panels treating the same theme. In addition to the works illustrating the legend of Apollo and Daphne, there are also series on the themes of Susanna and the Elders and the story of Saint Joseph, among others. The subject of the present panel is drawn from Genesis 24, the story of Isaac. It is possible that our painting relates to another work by the artist depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac formerly in the collection of E. A. McGuire in Dublin, Ireland (Fig. 3), and that these two panels were originally part of a decorative scheme based on the story of Isaac. Although the Master’s paintings of this type have traditionally been considered painted fronts of wedding chests, known as cassoni, the scale of these paintings and the fact that they are often part of a series indicates that they are more likely spalliera panels—paintings set into furniture or the wainscoting of a room. The biblical episode depicted in this painting centers on the theme of marriage, which suggests that this work was likely commissioned for the domestic interior of a newly married couple. The Master has transcribed into paint even the minute details of this Old Testament story, in which Abraham sends a servant to travel by camel to the land of his father and seek out a wife for his son Isaac. The servant is here shown at the well...

Provenance: Robert Hollberton, Antigua, ca. 1841 Private Collection, New York The present painting depicts Old St. John’s Cathedral on the island of Antigua. The church was erected in the 1720s on the designs of the architect Robert Cullen. It measured 130 feet by 50 feet with north and south porches 23 x 20 ½ feet. The tower, 50 feet high with its cupola, was added in 1789. The church was elevated to the status of a cathedral, but disaster struck in the form of an earthquake that destroyed the building on 8 February 1843. A memorandum of that date relates the event: “On Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, this island was visited by a most terrific and destructive earthquake. At twenty minutes before eleven o’clock in the forenoon, while the bell was ringing for prayers, and the venerable Robert Holberton was in the vestry-room, awaiting the arrival of persons to have their marriage solemnized, before the commencement of the morning service, the whole edifice, from one end to the other, was suddenly and violently agitated. Every one within the church, after the first shock, was compelled to escape for his life. The tower was rent from the top to the bottom; the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground with a dreadful crash; the east parapet wall of the tower thrown upon the roof of the church; almost the whole of the north-west wall by the north gallery fell out in a mass; the north-east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular; the altar-piece, the public monument erected to the memory of lord Lavington, and the private monuments, hearing the names of Kelsick, Warner, Otley, and Atkinson, fell down piecemeal inside; a large portion of the top of the east wall fell, and the whole of the south-east wall was precipitated into the churchyard, carrying along with it two of the cast-iron windows, while the other six remained projecting from the walls in which they had been originally inserted; a large pile of heavy cut stones and masses of brick fell down at the south and at the north doors; seven of the large frontpipes of the organ were thrown out by the violence of the shock, and many of the metal and wooden pipes within displaced; the massive basin of the font was tossed from the pedestal on which it rested, and pitched upon the pavement beneath uninjured. Thus, within the space of three minutes, this church was reduced to a pile of crumbling ruins; the walls that were left standing being rent in every part, the main roof only remaining sound, being supported by the hard wood pillars.” The entrance from the southern side into the cathedral, which was erected in 1789, included two imposing statues, one of Saint John the Divine and the other of Saint John the Baptist in flowing robes. It is said that these statues were confiscated by the British Navy from the French ship HMS Temple in Martinique waters in 1756 during the Seven Years’ War and moved to the church. The statues are still in situ and can be seen today, much as they appeared in Bisbee’s painting, but with the new cathedral in the background (Fig. 1). Little is known of the career of Ezra Bisbee. He was born in Sag Harbor, New York in 1808 and appears to have had a career as a political cartoonist and a printmaker. His handsome Portrait of President Andrew Jackson is dated 1833, and several political lithographs...

Lubin Baugin (Pithiviers 1610 – 1663 Paris) Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist Oil on canvas 22 x 42 ¼ inches (55.9 x 107.3 cm) Provenance: Marcello and Carlo ...