Unknown

The Birth of Jesus Christ, S. Andrea Church, Pistoia - Vintage Photo Early 1900

Early 20th Century

Pistoia Cathedral is an original photograph taken in Pistoia Cathedral, Italy, realized by an Anonymous photographer. Titled on the lower, a detail of the silver frontal. Very Good...

Parma Cathedral -  Vintage Photo is a black and white photograph of the early 20th century by Alinari. Information is written on the lower in Italian. Good conditions, aged with fo...

Assumption of Mary, Monache Church, Barga, is an original photograph taken in Barga province of Lucca, Italy, realized by an Anonymous photographer....

The Cathedral of Lucca is an original photograph taken in Lucca cathedral, realized by an Anonymous photographer. Titled on the lower with the description in Italian" Altare di S. Re...

Antique print titled 'The Nativity'. Original antique print on chine collé, made after the painting by Lorenzo di Credi. Source unknown, to be determined. Published circa 1890.

Tommaso Amantini (Urbania, 1625 - Rome, 1675) "Holy Family with St. John and Angels" terracotta relief, 53x39 cm; in coeval ebonized and gilded wood frame (total measurements 80x67....

Ferdinand Barbedienne (Saint-Martin-de-Fresnay 1810 – 1892 Paris) after Lorenzo Ghiberti (Florence, 1378 – 1455) Signed at the lower right of the principal relief: F. BARBEDIENNE Provenance: Private Collection, USA. Barbedienne’s “Gates of Paradise” reliefs are one of the triumphs of nineteenth-century bronze casting and patination. The nine panels that comprise our example are half-size reductions of the famous originals by Lorenzo Ghiberti, made for the Baptistery of Florence and now housed in the Museo del Opera del Duomo. Mounted in an impressive, mullioned frame surround, our work is an exceptional exemplar of the Renaissance Revival, the broadly influential style and movement that infused architecture, design, and artistic culture in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The central scene, The Story of Joseph, is perhaps the most celebrated of the entire series depicting as it does seven episodes from the Biblical narrative integrated into a single composition: Joseph cast by his brethren into the well, Joseph sold to the merchants, the merchants delivering Joseph to the pharaoh, Joseph interpreting the pharaoh’s dream, the pharaoh paying him honor, Jacob sending his sons to Egypt, and Joseph recognizes his brothers and returns home. The surrounding reliefs—two vertical figures in niches, two recumbent figures, and four portrait heads in roundels—are as well faithful reductions of Ghiberti’s original bronzes on other parts of the doors. The maker of these casts was the renowned 19th-century French fondeur Ferdinand Barbedienne. Gary Radke has recently written of this great enterprise: “The Parisian bronze caster Ferdinand Barbedienne began making half-sized copies of ancient and Renaissance sculpture in the 1830s. His firm benefitted enormously from the collaboration of Achille Collas, whom Meredith Shedd has shown was one of numerous pioneers in the mechanical reproduction of sculpture. Their competitors largely devoted themselves to reproducing relief sculpture, but Collas devised a process for creating fully three-dimensional copies. A tracing needle, powered by a treadle, moved over the surface of a full-sized plaster cast or bronze of the original and triggered a complementary action in a cutting stylus set over a soft plaster blank…He signed an exclusive contract with Barbedienne on November 29, 1838, and won medals for his inventions in 1839 and 1844. Barbedienne’s half-sized copies of the Gates of Paradise were famous not only for their fidelity to the original, but also for the way their gilding…suggested the glimmering surface that was hidden under centuries of dirt. Some critics even saw Collas’s and Barbedienne’s work as ‘philanthropic, an exemplary adaptation of industry to the requirements of art, the artist, the workers, and the public alike.’ At 25,000 francs, Collas’s and Barbedienne’s reduction of the Gates of Paradise was singularly more expensive than any other item for sale in their shop. All the reliefs, individual statuettes, and busts were cast separately and could be purchased either by the piece or as an ensemble. Fittingly, Barbedienne’s accomplishment earned him the Grand Prix at the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle, along with numerous other medals.” Three complete examples of the Barbedienne-Ghiberti doors are known. One, first installed in a chapel in the Villa Demidoff of San Donato near Pratolino, was later acquired by William Vanderbilt...

Antique print titled 'The Circumcision'. Original antique print on chine collé, made after the painting by Signorelli. Source unknown, to be determined. Published circa 1890.