Ars Antiqua Decorative Art

XVII Century Madonna and Child Oil on canvas, 116 x 83 cm The canvas under consideration depicts the Icon of the Most Holy Virgin Consoled, or more correctly Consoler of the Affl...

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...

Follower of Simon Vouet (Paris, 1590 - 1649) The Holy Family with bird Oil on glass, cm 20.5 x 23.5; with frame cm 27.5 x 29.5 The small painting examined, made on glass and...

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...

Paolo Monaldi (Rome, 1710 - after 1779), attr. Genre scene Oil on canvas, 34 x 25 cm With frame, 36 x 46 cm The canvas describes a moment of rest taken from the rural world: the strings of a lute plucked by an elderly man in the foreground cheer a woman with her child and a passer-by with his mule stopped to listen. The subject is typical of Paolo Monaldi, a painter born in Rome in 1710 and a pupil of the landscape painter Paolo Anesi...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...