Ars Antiqua Wall Decorations

Late 18th - early 19th century River Landscape Oil on canvas, 64 x 96 cm - with frame 77 x 10 cm The canvas in question is an example of Vedutist painting at the turn of the 18th an...

Giovanni Domenico Molinari (Caresana, 1721 - Turin, 1793) Lying Female figure Oil on canvas, cm 46 x. 31 - With frame, cm 56 x 42 The present painting is connected by style and treated subject, in this case a young girl lying in an idyllic landscape, to the production of small pictures of pastoral subject of the Piedmontese painter Giovanni Domenico Molinari (Caresana, 1721 - Turin, 1793). Molinare was born in Caresana (Vercelli) on 19 July 1721 but after losing both his parents he moved to Turin. Here he became, from 1736, a pupil of the Academy of Drawing founded by the painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont (Turin, 4 July 1694 - Turin, 21 June 1766) where he remained as a pensioner until December 1755. Molinari was immediately engaged in the translation of the master’s sketches on cardboard used for the Regia manufacture of tapestries. His early success on the Turin art scene is confirmed by the fact that he joined the Compagnia di San Luca in 1756. In 1751 he married Margherita Peiroleri, whose brothers Pietro (engraver) and Nicolò (painter) also attended the school. Remained widower count two other marriages first with Lucrezia Elisabetta Burzio and then in 1770 with Domenica Maria Ferrero. On the death of the master in 1766 Molinari, considered by his contemporaries to be the most faithful interpreter of the master and for his elegant and Arcadian style, which clearly interprets the aesthetic taste of the court, was called to finish the works that remained unfinished, such as the altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Moncalieri depicting the Assumption venerated by Blessed Bernard of Baden and Saint Anthony. Molinari was also well praised by critics and Abbot Lanzi highlighted the quality of the production of historical and mythological subject for the rigorous post-marattesco classicism. In Turin he worked for Vittorio Amedeo III of Savoy as a portrait painter, executing for him eleven canvases (between 1774 and 1775), but, since 1745, he also supplied tapestry cartoons to the local Fabbrica, of which, in 1766, he became director. The production of paintings of sacred subjects is also lively, especially used in the decoration of the churches of the capital as the Assumption for the Hotel of Virtue and San Pietro Regalado and San Benedetto il Moro for Santa Maria degli Angeli ( Torino) He also painted tempera and oil cartoons for the same church, on the occasion of the beatification of Pacifico da San Severino (1787) and, for that of San Francesco di Paola, when Gaspare de Bono...

19th century, English School Gentleman’s portrait Oil on canvas, cm 76,5 x 64 The painting in question portrays a gentleman of the second h...

17th century, Roman School Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria Oil on canvas, 32 x 23 cm Frame cm 45 x 36 The saint is depicted in front of the Virgin holding the Child portrayed with the wedding ring in his hand, enriched with a precious stone. According to the Golden Legend, Catherine of Alexandria was a very beautiful young woman, the only daughter of the king of Costa, who had refused to marry the emperor Maxentius because she was a Christian and devoted to Christ. Maxentius, unable to convince her to sacrifice to idols, had sent to call the wisest men and fifty philosophers and orators who presented themselves and tried to divert her from faith in Christ. Catherine, however, played so well that she was able to convert them, arousing the anger of the emperor who condemned them to the stake. Catherine, however, who had criticized Maxentius for the new persecutions against the Christians, was sentenced to prison without food. Abandoned for twelve days, she was fed by a dove sent by God. Maxentius then decided to execute her with the torture of the toothed wheel become her attribute iconographic; but by divine intervention this broke and the young was saved. Finally, she was beheaded and milk flowed from her neck. Catherine’s princely status is witnessed here by her sumptuous dress. The iconography of the mystical marriage was born in the fifteenth century, probably because the traditional iconographic attribute, the wheel, was sometimes so small as to look like a ring, and refers to a vision that will always remain present in the mind and heart of the saint. In Heaven she appeared to her, among the Angels and Saints, Christ the Child, in the arms of the Virgin. He took a precious ring that the Virgin Mary handed to her and put it in her finger, saying "I, your Creator and Saviour, take you in marriage; confident that you will keep you pure until you celebrate your eternal wedding with me, in Paradise" When Catherine was laughing, she found in her finger the same ring that she had seen and had in Heaven, and she considered herself forever the bride of Christ. In this extraordinary episode we can see the heart of Catherine’s religious sense, and of all her spirituality. For her, Christ is like the bridegroom, with whom there is a relationship of intimacy, communion and fidelity; he is the beloved, whom she loves above all...

Roman School, 17th century Angelica and Medoro engrave their names on the bark of a tree Oil on canvas, 65 x 48.5 cm The canvas depicts one of the most famous episodes of O...

Antonio Cifrondi (1665 - 1730), Attributed Man with stick - Saint Joseph Measures: Oil on canvas, Cm 115 x 79 - With frame, cm 139 x 103 This canvas is, for stylistic and c...

Francesco Zucco (circa 1575-1627) Gentleman’s portrait Measures: Oil on canvas, cm 120 x 140 The painting analyzed here belongs to the pictorial production of Francesco Zucc...

Flemish School, 17th century Live nature couple with animals Measures: Oil on canvas, cm 25 x 35 - With frame cm 37 x 48 The pair of canvases in question depicts two excited...

17th century, Tuscan school Madonna and Child Oil on canvas, 31 x 21 cm With frame, cm 37,5 x 27,5 The pearly incarnations and the thoughtful play of looks between the Virgin, turned to the Son, and Questi, warmly open to the viewer, pour out the present painting with compositional perfection. Virginal fabrics become mottled at the folds, wrapping the Madonna in a thin vitreous mantle. The pastel colors, shining on the pink robe just tightened at the waist by a gold cord, enliven the faces of the divine couple in correspondence of the cheeks, lit by an orange warmth. Even the left hand of the Virgin, composed in perfect classical pose (Botticelli, Madonna with Child, 1467, Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon), is sprinkled with warmth thanks to the immediate touch with Christ. From the nimbus of the Mother a delicate luminous disk is effused, which takes back, in the most distant rays, the colour of the hair of the Son, from the tones of the sun. The Child Jesus is represented intent in a tender gesture of invitation with the right hand, while with the other he offers a universal blessing: with his hand he retracts the index and annular palms, extending the remaining three fingers, symbol of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The painting welcomes and re-elaborates that typically Tuscan formalism that boasted in the rest of Italy the constant appreciation by the most up-to-date artists and collectors. Arrangement, composition and mixing of colors place the canvas in the middle between the changing mannerist and the sculptural figures of Michelangelo, essential yardstick of comparison in terms of anatomical and expressionistic rendering. In the present, silvery and pinkish powders act as three-dimensional inducers to the Child’s mentioned musculature and to the vivid folds of the clothes, expertly deposited on the lunar whiteness of the skins. While these colours recall the equally brilliantly transparent colours of Pier Francesco Foschi...

16th century, by Raffaello Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520) Madonna of the Carnations Measures: Oil on canvas 38 x 30 - with frame 59 x 52.5 cm The Madonna dei Garofani made b...

Guglielmo Napoli (Pavia, 1868 - Genoa, 1945) The betrothed Oil on panel, 46.6 x 68 cm Frame 73 x 81 cm Signed lower left "Gugl . mo Napoli Dipinse" The work in questi...

Antonio Bertoli (active between 1829 - 1842) Portraits of women (2) Oil on canvas, 41.5 x 31 cm With frame 52 x 42.5 cm Signed below A. Bertoli The two portraits examined here are by the hand of the artist Antonio Bertoli, a painter active in Florence between 1829 - 1842. He trained at the Florentine Academy, where in 1832 he obtained the prize for the nude in drawing. At the academic exhibitions of the following years he exhibited mainly portraits, including a representation of Nicolò Macchiavelli executed in 1837. An eclectic artist, he experimented with different genres: for the Villa Puccini di Scornio in Pistoia, in 1838, he was commissioned to create a history picture, The death of Francesco Ferrucci (Pistoia, Civic Museum), inspired by an episode of the novel Siege of Florence by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. Instead, two religious paintings date back to the 1840s: Christ chasing the merchants from the Temple and a Virgin Mary, In the portraits analyzed Bertoli depicts two half-length women taken from a foreshortening and a frontal in close pose, characterized by very similar Mediterranean features. In the first painting the woman, taken from the front, looks directly at the viewer. The wavy hair is decorated with a colorful violet and is partially covered by a white veil...

17th century, Nuvolone workshop Annunciation Measures: Oil on canvas, 98.50 x 127.00 cm - with frame 144 x 115 Depicted is a canonical Annunciation which sees Mary on her knees ...

18th century Almsgiver plate with saint Brass, 46 cm diameter The alms dish, properly called "alms dish", is a container usually decorated in the shape ...

17th century, Emilian school, Pamigianino painter Rest on the flight to Egypt Oil on panel, 46 x 39 cm - with frame 55.5 x 48.5 cm The wor...

17th century Virgin of the Assumption Oil on canvas, 93 x 81 cm Frame, 110 x 97 cm The present Assumption of the Virgin welcomes an innova...

Painter active in Rome in the 18th-19th century. View of the temple of Minerva Medica Oil on canvas, 65 x 78 cm - with frame 71.5 x 85 cm The painting bears a traditional attribution to François Marius Granet (Aix-en-Provence, 1775 - 1849). The painter was a pupil of David but from 1802 to 1819 he lived in Rome, as evidenced by a series of paintings depicting views of the city and especially of the Roman countryside (Ponte San Rocco in Tivoli, 1810-20, MoMA, New York), and then return there between 1825 and 1830. In the Eternal City Granet devoted himself to landscape painting, inspired by the landscape painting of Gaspard Dughet and Van Lint...

Follower of Giambattista Valentino Piazzetta (Venice, 1682 - there, 1754) Head of St. Peter Oil on canvas applied on cardboard, 36.5 x 34.5 cm With frame 42.5 x 41 cm The claves Regni Coelorum, an essential Petrine attribute, shyly peek out in this painting, with the sole purpose of allowing the character to be recognized. The wholeness of attention is indeed conveyed to the Saint, from aching humanity and divine inspiration. Pietro is rendered with a liquid epidermis, illuminated by a pearly light that slips and drips to define the overbearing nose, cheekbones and browbone; while the vitreous humor of the eye turns bright to the sky, to investigate the highest wills of the divine mystery. The portrait, rendered here in intense monochrome, denounces the direct dependence of the present artist on the suggestions of Giambattista (Valentino) Piazzetta, one of the greatest among the eighteenth-century Venetian masters. Following an immature apprenticeship in the field of wood carving with his father Jacopo, a sculptor from Pederobba, in the Treviso area, Piazzetta retired to the workshop of Antonio Molinari...

17th century Christ in chains Oil on canvas, 95 x 71 cm Frame 110 x 84 cm The figurative tradition representing Christ with chained hands can be traced back to the early Middle Ages, when an iconography of His pains spread widely. The need to translate the Passion into images aimed to raise awareness of the forgiveness that has occurred for all men, consequent to the Crucifixion. This painting depicts the moment before the audience before Pilate. Christ has not yet been cruelly mocked by the soldiers, despite the fact that he is already wearing the crown of thorns and the purple...

19th century, Lombard school Portrait of a Gentleman Oil on canvas, 92 x 71 cm With frame 107 x 87 cm The elegant portrait in question depicts a carefully dressed gentle...

Emilian school, 17th century Putto with rose Oil on canvas, 43.5 x 32 cm - with frame 45 x 32.5 cm The figure of the putto, when equipped with specific attributes, lends it...

Nineteenth century View from the spiers of the Milan Cathedral Watercolor on paper, 43 x 30 cm The watercolor in question depicts some ladies and gentlemen intent on enjoyi...

Nineteenth century. Still life with fruits. Oil on canvas, 64 x 52 cm. The still life analyzed presents a mixture of floral and fruit elements arranged in a circular order o...

Florentine school, 17th century St. John Baptist Oil on canvas, diameter cm 20 - with frame diameter 30 In this small round-format canvas, St. J...

Riccardo Pellegrini (Milan 1863 - Crescenzago 1934) Spanish party before the bullfight Oil on canvas, 29 x 39 - with frame, 45 x 55 cm The painting, given the signature, is the ...

Central-northern Italy, 18th century. Pair of inlays. (2) Various types of wood, briar, 25 x 38.5 cm. Frame, 25 x 38 cm. Very rare and meticu...

Giuseppe Riva (Ivrea, 1834 - 1916). View of the Naviglio with the Duomo. Tempera on canvas, 49.5 x 69.5 cm. Signed lower left "Riva G." This cit...

17th century Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine Measures: Oil on canvas, 98 x 81 cm - with frame 119 x 102 cm The scene represents the mystical marriage between Catherine of A...

Armando Santi (1925 - 2015) Venice Tempera on canvas, 87 x 77 cm Frame 105.5 x 95.5 cm Signed lower left: A. Santi "A pulsating, incisive, dynamic painting, sometime...

Giovanni Battista Castello, known as "Il Genovese" (1547-1637) Penitent Magdalene Tempera on parchment, 21 x 17 cm Frame 26 x 22 cm The precious tempera painting on parchment is to be referred to the hand of the painter Giovanni Battista Castello (1547-1637), called “il Genovese” to distinguish him from the homonymous contemporary, architect and painter, called “il Bergamasco”. Older brother of Bernardo, a famous painter of late Ligurian Mannerism, he began his activity in the field of religious goldsmithing, to which he soon joined the art of miniature, an art to which he ended up dedicating himself completely and with greater satisfaction, bringing it back to a success and to a disclosure that he had not known since the Middle Ages and which now found incentive and justification in the spiritual and cultural climate of the Counter-Reformation. In the sources he is cited as self-taught; However, his assiduous frequentation of Luca Cambiaso...

Italian painter, 20th century Piazzetta San Marco Watercolor on canvas, 68 x 51 cm With frame, 88 x 62 cm Signed lower left and right Zi (?) Li The painting portrays Palazzo...

Workshop of Jan Frans van Bloemen (Antwerp, 1622 - Rome, 1749) Lazio landscape Oil on canvas, 48.5 x 64.5 cm The painting, to be considered belonging to the vast production...

Circle of Abraham van Strij (Holland, 1753 - 1826) Market scene Oil on copper, 45 x 36 With frame 60 x 50 cm The lively port everyday life that transpires from this pain...

Frederick T. Sibley (1837-1912) Winter scene in North Wales Measures: Pastel on wood, 122.5 x 81.5 cm Frame 151.5 x 111 cm Signed lower left...

18th century, Piedmontese, School Scene with spinner Measures: Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm Frame 70 x 80 cm.

Nineteenth century Evaluation of the art expert Measures: Oil on canvas, 97 x 77 cm Frame 112 x 92 cm Signed "Morselli" The canvas depicts a young married couple intent o...

Adele Pinot (1848), by Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575 - 1642) Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child Oil on canvas, 97 x 107 cm Signed lower right "Adele Pinot 1848" The canvas examined depicts the Madonna and Child, caught in a moment of great tenderness and intimacy. Wrapped in a brilliant luminosity, the little Jesus is depicted in the foreground comfortably lying on some soft drapes. The face appears peacefully asleep and is framed by blond curls; the complexion is white and the legs, just curled up and slightly bent at the knee, help to accentuate the naturalness and sweetness of the composition. Full of tenderness and maternal love, the figure of the Madonna appears, with delicate features and a head covered by a veil, which, placed at three quarters, is totally attracted to the contemplation of her little son. The high quality that can be found in the execution of the figures is also emphasized in the rendering of the soft drapery and in the careful attention to detail. The work, created in 1848 by the French artist Adele Pinot, re-elaborates the famous Madonna in adoration of the Child by Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575 - 1642) now preserved in the Doria Pamphilj...

17th century, Emilian school Rural landscape with gallant scenes Oil on canvas, 37 x 47.5 cm With frame 61 x 50.5 cm The bucolic amenity of the present is reflected in the joyful gallant scenes that dot its surface. The locus amoenus described reflects on the more traditional inflection of Arcadia, which in the literary transfiguration was the scenario par excellence of the most carefree pastoral life and out of this world; the painting is therefore a forerunner of what was professed by the actual poetic academy of Arcadia which was established in Rome in 1690, but enthusiastically testifies to the feverish invitations to its acceptance, then widespread in the most avant-garde cultural salons throughout Italy. First Theocritus and Virgil later had awakened with Idilli and Bucoliche that capacity typical of the natural world to allow an escape from reality; the contemplation of perfect natural fruits that followed would have evoked in the spirits of dreaming men back to origins. The bucolic landscape was able to positively give a rhythm to material life, and constituted the concretization of a place devoid of incivility and ugliness, where only dreams, wild music and homages to fruitful nature were allowed. In the present painting widespread figures of shepherd children trace the same intent to the sublimation of earthly life, gathered in pairs, while children on the model of the ancient cherubs cheer the field with flowers and petals. The games of these and the sweet affections of the other characters are rendered through liquid and vibrant brushstrokes, flickering with a white light that opposes the dark shadow of the undergrowth. In the distance, the sky tapers with a silvery and flat brushstroke, while the vertical development of the promoters with architectures helps to introject a bright beam of light into the grassy clearing. The foliage and the turf of the landscape piece are rendered through a digital brushstroke, betraying the Italian brand of the present, influenced at the same time by the seventeenth-century European influences that then conveyed to the capital. The evocative culture of the city attracted many artists from the city of Bologna, from the Italian north but also from the territories beyond the Alps, such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. The historical-artistic heritage of the Italian pastoral scenes was thus able to fill up with the more functional and particular formalisms of the charms coming from elsewhere, such as the expressive tremor of the present, similar to the contemporary French lexicon. The typological restitution from pastoral idyll, in accordance with the intrinsic stylistic qualities of the work, allows us to specify the solid belonging of the present to the Italian hand, similarly to what was then emerging in the pictorial sphere within the Emilian school. In this regard, we should recall the latent influences of two decisive foreign landscape painters who passed through the Emilian belt, such as Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665); before them, Giovanni Battista Viola...

Francesco Fergola (Naples, 1801 - there, 1875) Pair of Views of Pompeii Tempera on paper, 33 x 48 cm Frame 49 x 64 cm The two views in question are signed by Francesco F...

Nineteenth century Marine view Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 100.5 cm Frame 100 x 126 cm The arrival of the storm is announced on the left side of the canvas by the presence of r...

Circle of Antonio Amorosi (Comunanza, 1660 - Rome, 1738) Portrait of young people Oil on canvas, 87 x 67 cm The painting depicting this portrait was made by an artist activ...

Circle of Nicolaes Berchem (1620, Haarlem - 1683, Amsterdam) Architectural capriccio with herds Oil on canvas, 57.5 x 74 cm With frame 76 x 93 cm The examined canvas is...

John Califano (Rome, 1864 - Chicago, 1924) Snowy mountainous landscape Oil on canvas, 74 x 90 cm With frame 90 x 107 cm Signed lower right ...

Marco De Gregorio (Resin, 1829 - 1876) Procession Oil on canvas, 53 x 44 cm Frame 55.5 x 46 cm The work can be attributed to the hand of Marco De Gregorio (1829-1876) painter born in Resina (now Herculaneum, in the province of Naples). He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples where he was especially interested in historical painting. In 1858 he hosted the landscape painter Federico Rossano in his home in Portici and starting from 1863 the two painter friends, together with the young Apulian Giuseppe De Nittis and the Tuscan Adriano Cecioni, gave life to the artistic movement called Scuola di Resìna, to which various artists, including Raffaele Belliazzi, Alceste Campriani, Antonino Leto and Edoardo Dalbono. The motifs of the painting of the Resìna School were similar to those of the Tuscan school of Pergentina, to which Raffaello Sernesi, Giuseppe Abbati and Silvestro Lega...

Attr. to Girolamo Siciolante known as da Sermoneta (Sermoneta, 1521 - Rome, 1575) Adoration of the Shepherds Oil on copper, 39 x 29.5 cm Frame 47 x 39 cm The refined taste, the refined poses, the definition of the anatomies, the vibrant light, allow us to identify for this painting the hand of a Mannerist painter active during the sixteenth century. In particular, the composition and stylistic research allow us to attribute the panel to Girolamo Siciolante, known as da Sermoneta (1521 - 1575). His first training took place under the guidance of Leonardo Grazia known as da Pistoia (1502 - 1548). Later he settled in Rome where he was able to see the painting of Raphael and Michelangelo from life and where he was first a pupil and then a collaborator of Perin del Vaga...

I. Reneman (Netherlands, active in the second half of the 18th century) Parrot with cherubs and flowers Oil on canvas, 100.5 x 84.5 cm Signed on the base “I. Reneman fecit...

Roman school, 18th century The Sacrifice of Iphigenia Oil on canvas, Measures: 50 x 64.5 cm The canvas depicts The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, a theme reported by numerous sources, including the Greek tragedies Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides and Agamemnon by Aeschylus, as well as in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The myth tells how the Greeks, under the command of Agamemnon, gathered at the city of Aulis, in Boeotia, from which they then set sail for Troy. The persistent calm of the winds, however, prevents the Greek ships...

Attributed to Giacomo Ceruti (Milan, 1698-1767) Portrait of Felice Paganoni Oil on canvas, 98.5 x 73 cm With frame, 109 x 85 x 4 cm "Felice Pag...

Area of ??Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo (Naples, 1629 - 1697) Still life with fruit and little bird Measures: Oil on canvas, 62 x 83 cm The still life in question shows juicy citrus fruits, among which we can recognize oranges and cedars, together with red berries scattered on the ground. A cheerful little bird rests on the edge of a terracotta pot in which some pink-mottled carnations grow. The landscape that can be observed all around is veiled by clouds and shaded by shrubs, while in the distance there is a green hill. Dominating the foreground and standing out from the dark background is the fruit which, lush and juicy, stands out in the vivacity of the colors in contrast with the dark background. The full-bodied brushstroke that delineates the wrinkled peel of citrus fruits to restore the realism of the fruit, just as the green leaves of the stems softly folded on themselves are sketched with extreme truthfulness, they ascribe the work to a painter working in the circle of Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo. Ruoppolo is a Neapolitan artist, specialized in the genre of still life, indeed De Dominici himself in his Lives of Neapolitan painters, sculptors and architects recognizes him a primary role in the Neapolitan school of the genre. He studied, together with Giuseppe Recco (1634 -?), In the workshop of Paolo Porpora (1617 - 1673). He painted almost exclusively fruit and flower paintings...

Attr. Jacobus or Iacomo Victors (Amsterdam c. 1640 - 1705) Still life with birds Oil on canvas, 112 x 133 cm The still life examined here is a rare example of the simultaneous presence of live and dead animals in a single composition. On two rocky levels different ornithological species are neatly arranged, reproduced with the utmost fidelity and adherence to life. Mallards, doves, sparrows and a partridge placed on their backs can be recognized. The soft mantles with different chromatic tones, with the characteristic streaks and spots of color, together with the precise investigation of the various ornithological typologies, denote an observation of the real datum typical of the seventeenth-century Flemish tradition. Another mallard, this time alive, seems to have just settled on the rock, as if to observe the rich composition moving its neck. Its characteristic colors, the bright green of the head and the upper part of the neck, the yellow of the beak and the orange of the legs characterize the painting and capture the viewer's attention. The flight of the dove in the foreground is splendid, seen from above, the virtuosic pose and the brightness of its feathers, in an elegant modulation of grays tending to white, denote the stylistic quality of this work. It was probably created by a Flemish artist working in Italy in the second half of the seventeenth century: close analogies can be found with the game of Jacobus Victor...

19th century Castel Sant'Angelo Oil on canvas, 49 x 58.5 cm The analyzed painting portrays a pleasant view of the city of Rome. Taken from the bank of the Tiber, Castel Sant'A...

XVIII century Views of Rome (9) Tempera on paper, 9 x 14 cm; with frame 34 x 40 cm During the seventeenth century the fashion of the Grand Tour spread among the aristocracy, a ...

Roman school, late 16th-early 17th century Praying Madonna Oil on canvas, 81 x 69 cm Frame 83 x 95.5 cm A divine whiteness reverberates with vibrant luster on the maphorion of the present Virgin. The palpable iridescence that structures the thin rosaceous garment, woven with the same fresh light, produces a slight rustle when she takes her hands off. The Madonna in fact takes a prayerful pose, opening her palms to underline her fervent ecstatic intention; the white neck is rendered with perishable fullness of pigments, like the hands, perfectly alive, and the very shiny eyes. With fine shrewdness the artist of the present styles the Virgin's hair with thin white ribbons, exacerbating the purity. An evocative light falls gently on the bust, a materialized sign of divine glory. The present can be traced back to the late Mannerist climate that prevailed in the capital after the emanation of the Tridentine council (1545-1563). The late Mannerist licenses that can still be seen there, such as the intense lyricism in the stylistic code adopted by the artist, are innervated in the new basic catechetical intent, which at the end of the century produced a certain figurative rigorism. The present, however, still responds to that extraordinary Roman dynamism that raised the capital to a bulwark for the entire mannerist lesson, matched only by a second artistic center, the Florentine one. The engaging carriage of the Virgin reflects the contemporary examples of Giuseppe Valeriano (1542-1596), a Jesuit painter, returning in the Marriage of the Virgin of the Roman Church of Jesus, as well as in the Madonna of Sorrows in the Recanati Altarpiece, equal ardor. But it is in the Assumption of the Virgin painted in four hands with Scipione Pulzone...

Circle of Simone Cantarini known as the Pesarese (Pesaro, 1612 - Verona, 1648) St. Joseph Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 cm Frame 80 x 64 cm The sty...

XVIII century St. Francis receives the stigmata Oil on canvas, 97 x 75.5 cm.

XVIII century Rural scenes (4) Tempera on paper, 20 x 31 cm With 18th century Venetian mirrored frame, 31 x 39 cm.

Painter active in Rome (late 17th century) Coastal landscape and ships under repair Oil on canvas, 113 x 143 cm With frame 125 x 159 This fantasy coastal view can be attributed to a foreign painter active in Italy between the 17th and 18th centuries. The Italianizing taste, in our case deduced from the models of Agostino Tassi and especially from the examples of Gaspare Vanvitelli...

Domenico Carnevale (Sassuolo, 1524 - Modena, 1579) Adoration of the Shepherds Oil on copper, 42 x 28 cm Frame 54 x 36 cm Expert opinion of Prof. Emilio Negro The painting represents the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Child in the center, next to the Madonna kneeling in prayer and an angel behind her; towards him in the foreground a woman with a child in her arms, a shepherd with a sheep on the right, a bagpiper on the left and various other male and female characters turn to him. The architectures of the background, between which a glimpse of the landscape can be glimpsed, are hidden in the upper part by the clouds, where a "celestial glory" encamps with three flying angels. The painting shows mannerist characters that can be traced back to the second half of the sixteenth century, and can be traced back to an author from the Modena area, with stylistic references to the Bolognese Samacchini (1532 - 1577) and Passerotti (1529 - 1592). More precisely, it can be attributed to Domenico Carnevale (1524-1579), one of the most important masters of the sixteenth century active in the local area. The Carnival was formed in Emilia, his homeland, where he worked for many years. However, his works also show a clear Roman influence, dictated by a long experience in the city, during which he also dedicated himself to the restoration of the Sistine Chapel. Trained in the late-mannerist environment of Modena, he is also linked to the Parmesan Corrorese and Ferrarese Dossesque tradition; Carnival also always maintains a slight archaic sentiment in his work, The main stylistic reference must be identified in a work similar in subject and iconographic setting, coming from the church of the Pio Istituto Orfanelle di San Geminiano di Modena, currently part of the Art Collection of the Province, attributed to the same influence as the Carnival. Another interesting comparison should be identified with A Presentation of Jesus in the Temple...

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (Danzig, 1726 - Berlin, 1801) Interior scene with concert Oil on canvas, 42 X 34 cm With frame 57 x 49 x 6 cm Already attributed to Pietro Longhi, the ...

Giovanni Crivelli known as Crivellino (Milan,? - Parma, 1760) Fight between dogs and bison Oil on canvas, 84 x 111 cm With frame 112 x 139 cm Thanks to the comparison with h...