Decorative Art

19th Century heavy French bronze relief plaque with three winged dancing angels. Wonderful patina.

Hand carved during the reign of Louis XVI, this linden wood and oak plaque was originally a boiserie panel that would have adorned the wall of a French manor...

This beautiful 11.5 pottery charger is from Montelupo, Italy and is boldly decorated with a soldier on horseback. Vividly painted in yellow, green, and blue. Condition is very good, ...

Holy wall font. Bronze. Spain, 17th Century. Small font for holy water designed to be placed on a wall, which has a container decorated with moldings and architectural elements and...

19th century French Louis XVI style gilt and painted wood barometer. While not in working order, barometer has that wonderful old 'chippy' peeling patina. The carved wood frame and g...

Wonderful image after Raphael Fine Steel engraving. Published C.1850 Unframed.

Two beautiful antique and light friezes in gilded wood: one is cm. 40x16,5 x depth 3. The other one is cm. 36 x 30,5 x depth 3,5. To put where you want.

Beautiful etching representing the classic religious subject of the "Adoration of the Magi" by the Baroque painter and engraver Pietro Testa known as il Lucchesino. The print derives from an oil on canvas of the same name now in Montpelier. Identified by the TPL monogram on the right and the dedication signature. Paolo Bellini in the book "L'opera incisa di Pietro Testa" (The engraving work of Pietro Testa) ,published in 1976 by Neri Pozza in Vicenza, identifies this work as an example of the third state of three since, respect to the second state, the address of Gio Giacomo Rossi is added . In the lower margin there is the dedication in Latin to: Most illustrious and most reverend (cardinal) Gerolamo Bonvisi, Cleric of the Apostolic Chamber, D.D. The star on the left often blushes with the light of evil / Kings live here so that they recognize the Lord, / happy face good star shines benignly./ Petrus Testa Pietro Testa (1611–1650) was an Italian High Baroque artist active in Rome. He is best known as a printmaker and draftsman. He was born in Lucca, and thus is sometimes called il Lucchesino. He moved to Rome early in life. One source states he was ejected from the Cortona studio in 1631, soon after joining the workshop. Others state Testa trained under Pietro Paolini or under Domenichino, for whom he worked under the patronage of Cassiano dal Pozzo. He was friends with Nicolas Poussin and Francesco Mola. Some of his etchings, which often include work in drypoint, have a fantastic quality reminiscent of Jacques Callot, or embellishments of his Genoese contemporary Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and even presciently suggest William Blake. His Sacrifice of Iphigenia appears to have influenced Tiepolo's rendition at Villa Valmarana Ai Nani in Vicenza. His early prints, from the 1630s, were often religious and were influenced by Federico Barocci...

A beautiful Italian grand Tour Style Pietra Dura mosaic on marble Plaque with gilt framing. Picture is a bird on branch with leaves and flowers.

This beautiful pottery charger is from Montelupo, Italy and is hand painted with two soldiers sword fighting. Vividly painted in yellow, green, and blue. C...

Wonderful image after Rembrandt Fine Steel engraving. Published by Jones & Co., London. C.1850 Unframed.

A mid-18th-century Italian terracotta relief of the Virgin & Child appearing to St Philip Neri In a silver filigree, gilt-bronze and gilt-copper-mounted, lapis lazuli and wood frame. Known as the ‘Apostle of Rome’ due to his labours amongst the sick and poor of the city, Philip Neri (1515-1595) became an influential figure of the Counter-Reformation. Many miracles were attributed to him, and he was beatified by Paul V in 1615. His popularity and place in the folklore of Rome created a demand for his depiction within the church. For example, Carlo Maratta’s painting for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the preliminary study for which bears relation to the present composition (Royal Collection, inv. 905553). The fresh and freely modeled handling of the present relief is in the tradition of Giovanni Antonio Mazzuoli’s (1644-1706) small-scale modelli for altarpieces (C. Sisi and G. Gentilini, La Scultura : bozzetti in terracotta, piccoli marmi e altre sculture dal XIV al XX secolo, Florence, 1989, nos. 92-95). Additional information: Origin: Italy Period: Circa 1750, 18th Century Style: Religious, The Virgin and...

This beautiful pottery charger is is decorated with a woman carrying a basket of flowers on her head. Vividly painted in yellows, greens, and blues. Condition is very good, does have minor chips commiserate with age and use. Back is signed Vincent Garnier...

Carvings with a military, musical, hunting, or agricultural theme, known as trophies, became popular during the period of Louis XVI. This pair of large trophy panels have Neoclassica...

This stylish and chic pair of framed Spanish nobility portaits are fabricated with cast brass frames and lacqured paper. The set was purchased by the ...

'Sea Garden' panels in plaster by British Master craftsman Geoffrey Preston MBE. The designs for this pair of decorative panels spring from the series of drawings the artist made for the The Goring...

Crafted in France in the 1800s, this high quality gilt bronze wall clock has elements in the style of Louis XVI. The white clock face with blue numbers re...

Wonderful image after Rembrandt Fine Steel engraving. Published by Jones & Co., London. C.1850 Unframed.

" Ceres and Phytalus" To left, Phytalus, kneeling, receives the fig tree from the goddess Ceres, standing to right, as a reward for his hospitality. Etching and drypoint, circa 1662...

A light-brown, green antique Austrian Baroque oil on canvas painting by Franz Xaver Hornöck in a hand crafted original black, partly gilded wooden frame, in good condition. The vinta...

A large Flemish 17th-18th century baroque pictorial tapestry "The Royal Garden". The large tapestry depicting an allegorical park-scene of R...

"Arch dedicated to Hercules" and "Arch dedicated to Bellerophon" Splendid and very rare etchings belonging to a suite of subjects executed for the preparations of the "Celebrations for the entry into Antwerp of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinando of Habsburg-Spain on 17 April 1635". The sketches for the decorations were all drawn by Sir Peter Paul Rubens and the execution of the etchings was entrusted to Van Thulden. Bottom left: P.P. Rubens. Bottom right: G. Gervatius (who was commissioned to bring together the illustrations of the arches in a special volume) and Van Thulden. Laid paper with watermark - copper imprint - margins - excellent condition. At the end of 1634 Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was invited to make a series of drawings to decorate the city of Antwerp on the occasion of the solemn entry of the infant cardinal Ferdinand of Habsburg (1609-1641) who, after his death of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia (1633), Spanish governor of the southern Netherlands, had been elected as his successor. Generally in these circumstances, the itinerary was articulated through a series of stations and the city - in its main urban hubs - was adorned with decorations and ephemeral apparatuses which, without solution of continuity, covered the facades of the palaces, churches and convents facing the parade axis of the celebratory itinerary, testifying to the participatory role of the various public and private institutions that took part in the feast1. As had happened for the entrances of Charles V in 1520, of Philip II in 1549 and of the archdukes Albert and Isabella in 1599, also in this case, on 17 April 1635, the most important streets and squares of Antwerp were enriched with arrangements: temporary altars, four scenarios, a portico and large triumphal arches built in wood, over twenty meters height, decorated with paintings, sculptures and allegorical scenes. The references to the ancient alluded in this case to the greatness of the Habsburgs and to the merits of Ferdinand for the victory obtained over the Protestant armies of Sweden and their German allies. The choice to use the triumphal arch has its roots in the "city of the popes" and must be read as a connection with the triumphal and modern arches, with Rome and with the "possession" ceremony, placing the emphasis on its centuries-old use . In the elaboration of the drawings and sketches Rubens proved to be a true connoisseur of architecture, but what is most surprising about the artist is the casual use of architectural language and fidelity to sixteenth-century Roman models. In order for the memory of these works to be perpetuated over time, some artists were commissioned to etch the ephemeral apparatuses and, under the guidance of the painter Theodor van Thulden...

Late 18th Century, an antique Louis Seize period mirror in carved wood with gilded accents and foliage motifs, consisting its original mirror glass in good condition. Created in Fran...

19th century Italian hand hammered painted and parcel gilt metal panel. The panel is decorated with gold leaf flowers swirling throughout.

A charming and most decorative pair of French 19th century Louis XVI st. patinated bronze wall plaques in the manner of Clodion. Each rectangular plaque depicts charming winged cheru...

17th Century Portuguese Tile Panel. Restored 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles With certificate of authenticity and export issued by the Di...

A very fine Italian 17th century oval oil on canvas "Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns" Circle of Pierre Mignard (French, 1612-1695) within...

A gold, large antique French Louis XVI period barometer, signed by Torricelli in gilded wood and of oval shape with original scientific illustrations, in good condition. The detailed wall décor piece is consisting its original glass. Framed with gilt foliate trim and important pediment. Minor fading, due to age. Wear consistent with age and use, circa 1750, France. The Italian scientist Evangelista Torricelli...

Wonderful print of Sir Thomas Fairfax Copper-plate engraving by Engleheart after Bowers Published by Edward Jeffrey. Dated 1808 Unframed. .

Mesmerizing French still life oil painting on board. The midcentury painting depicts a pheasant on a tablecloth with green cabbage. Amazing detail and brushwork set in a distressed g...

A very fine carved over door pane: l in the Louis XVI style. France, circa 1980. P Dimensions: height 36 3/4 x width 66 1/2" depth 5" CW5323 & CW5324. Pai...

A Fine Italian 19th Century Oil Painting on Canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520). The circular painted canvas depicting a seated Madonna holding an infant Jesus Christ next to a child Saint John the Baptist, all within a massive carved gilt wood and gesso frame, which is identical to the frame on Raphael's original artwork. This painting is a 19th Century copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola painted in 1514 and currently exhibited and part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. The bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist fill the whole picture. The tender, natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child, and the harmonious grouping of the figures in the round, have made this one of Raphael's most popular Madonnas. The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal furniture, which has led to the assumption that Leo X himself commissioned the painting. A retailer's label reads " Fred K/ Keer's Sons - Framers and Fine Art Dealers - 917 Broad St. Newark, N.J." - Another label from the gilder reads "Carlo Bartolini - Doratore e Verniciatori - Via Maggio 1924 - Firenze". Circa: 1890-1900. Subject: Religious painting Canvas diameter: 28 inches (71.1 cm) Frame height: 54 inches (137.2 cm) Frame width: 42 1/2 inches (108 cm) Frame depth: 5 1/2 inches (14 cm) Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian, March 28 or April 6, 1483 - April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by the Pope - Urbino formed part of the Papal States - and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin. Early Life and Works His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother". The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, and has been disputed—eight was very early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did", according to Wölfflin. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters. The Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in December 1500. His first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in 1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory drawing remain. In the following years he painted works for other churches there, including the Mond Crucifixion (about 1503) and the Brera Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this period. These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the Three Graces and St. Michael, and he began to paint Madonnas and portraits. In 1502 he went to Siena at the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the cartoons, and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his career. Influence of Florence Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine period...

A rare pair of Flemish 18th century "Verre Églomisé" Reverse Glass Paintings, each depicting riverfront scenes with figures, fishermen castles, co...

Wonderful image after Rembrandt. Fine steel engraving. Published by Fisher, London. circa 1840 Unframed.

A beautiful pair of burin engravings depicting "Saint Bernardo degli Uberti" and "Saint Hilary of Poitiers" two of the patron saints of the city included in the base of the cupola ( dome ) of Parma cathedral frescoed by Antonio Allegri known as Correggio (Correggio, August 1489-Correggio 5 March 1534) between 1524 and 1530. Admirable work by the great master in which his genius as a forerunner of the Baroque is fully seen. In 1642 Giovanni Battista Vanni etched a series of fifteen plates from Correggio's frescoes. Giovanni Battista Vanni was born in Pisa around 1599; he studied successively under Jacopo da Empoli, Aurelio Lomi, and Matteo Rosselli, and then became a disciple of Cristofano Allori. He is better known as an engraver than as a painter. From 1624 to 1632, he lived in Rome, then returning to Florence after visiting Venice. In addition to the series of prints...

Gorgeous blue hand painted Baroque cherub or angel 18th century style Portuguese ceramic tile or azulejo This tile painted in blue over white in ...

Pair of decorative 'Flower Garden' panels in plaster by British Master craftsman Geoffrey Preston MBE. The designs for these spring from a series of drawings in one of the artist's sketchbooks. The decoration was modelled in clay onto a clay base, using fingers, thumbs and small boxwood tools. The clay base enabled Preston to draw into the background, as well as build up from it, which gives a greater depth and emphasis to the modelling. A silicon mould was made from the completed models, and from this plaster casts can be taken. He uses Herculite No 2 plaster with burlap (hessian) and timber lathes to reinforce. Each pair is cast to order and signed and numbered on the reverse. The 'Flower Garden' panels are original works. Preston's aim is to use the fluid character of clay to make poetry in light and shadow in plaster. There is a strong influence of flowers and plant forms in his work, often in the context of architectural elements. He is conscious of proportion and the language of gesture, which is demonstrated in the flowing nature and harmony evident in his work. Geoffrey Preston MBE is a Master of traditional plaster-relief techniques who draws on eighteenth-century decorative art and sculpture, but combines it with his contemporary eye for design. He cites Giacomo Serpotta of Sicily and Egid Qurin Asam of Bavaria as two of the greatest influences on his work, both of whom stretched the boundaries of what people thought possible to sculpt in plaster during the Late Baroque period. In addition, he admires painter Rex Whistler and wood engravers, Charles Tunnicliffe and Joan Hassall...

17th century Portuguese Tile Panel restored 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles With certificate of authenticity and export issued by the Dir...

Niche. Gilded and polychrome pine wood. Spain, 17th century. Niche made of carved and gilded pine wood, decorated with moldings, a venerated shape and plant elements in the upper p...

An Italian pair of Baroque style silver plated, two-light wall sconces from the 19th century. These antique wall lights from Italy each feature sha...

17th century Portuguese Tile Panel Restored Measures: 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles With certificate of authenticity and export issued ...

Gorgeous blue hand painted Baroque cherub or angel 18th century style Portuguese ceramic tile or azulejo This tile painted in blue over white in ...

17th Century Portuguese Tile Panel Restored 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles With certificate of authenticity and export issued by the Dir...

An exceptional and very high quality pair of French 19th century Louis XVI st. Belle Époque period giltwood and patinated bronze decorative wall plaques. Each impressive plaque is fr...

17th Century Portuguese Tile Panel Restored 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles With certificate of authenticity and export issued by the Dir...

We offer a very interesting work of art, this ,s an excepcional Italian Baroque Oil /canvas , showing a Rubens and Van Dyck portrait, teacher and student together !!! Peter Paul Rub...

Italian antique frieze in hand-carved wood and gilded gold leaf. Very rare. (See my published ancient friezes). You can hang it on the headboard, on a...

Carved giltwood wall torchere candle holder, Italy, 19th century-1930s Hand-carved gold gilt wood candlestick sconce with wrought iron details. This w...

18th century French Baroque Old Master painting oil on leather. Old Master painting, French Baroque period 18th century oil on leather represents a lush imaginary landscape in ric...

Gorgeous blue hand painted Baroque cherub or angel 18th century style Portuguese ceramic tile/azulejo The tile painted in cobalt blue over wh...

A beautiful Italian grand Tour Style Pietra Dura mosaic on marble Plaque with gilt framing. Picture is a bird on branch with leaves and flowers.

A Fine Italian 19th Century Oil Painting on Canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520). The circular painted canvas depicting a seated Madonna holding an infant Jesus Christ next to a child Saint John the Baptist, all within a massive carved two-tone gilt wood, gilt-patinated and gesso frame, which is identical to the frame on Raphael's original artwork. This painting is a 19th Century copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola painted in 1514 and currently exhibited and part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. The bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist fill the whole picture. The tender, natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child, and the harmonious grouping of the figures in the round, have made this one of Raphael's most popular Madonnas. The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal furniture, which has led to the assumption that Leo X himself commissioned the painting. Circa: 1890-1900. Subject: Religious painting Painting diameter: 28 inches (71.1 cm) Frame height: 55 1/8 inches (140 cm) Frame width: 46 inches (116.8 cm) Frame depth: 5 1/8 inches (13 cm) Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian, March 28 or April 6, 1483 - April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by the Pope - Urbino formed part of the Papal States - and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin. Early Life and Works His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother". The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, and has been disputed—eight was very early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did", according to Wölfflin. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters. The Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in December 1500. His first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in 1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory drawing remain. In the following years he painted works for other churches there, including the Mond Crucifixion (about 1503) and the Brera Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this period. These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the Three Graces and St. Michael, and he began to paint Madonnas and portraits. In 1502 he went to Siena at the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the cartoons, and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his career. Influence of Florence Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine period...

17th Century Portuguese tile panel. Restored 56cm x 56cm 14cm x 14cm tiles 17th Century Shortly afterwards, these plain white t...

A remarkable pair of French 19th century Louis XVI st. Belle Époque period ormolu and Mahogany decorative wall plaques signed F. Barbedienne. Each plaque is set on an elegant Mahogany backplate with fine scalloped bases and tops. The central ormolu plaques...

Important oil on panel by the great Dutch artist Philips Wouwerman (also Wouwermans) (1619 – 1668) a painter of hunting, landscape and battle scenes....

Giltwood Framed Limoges Enamel after François Boucher 'The Bird Catchers' France, Circa 1880s Framed in an elaborate hand carved pierced and giltwood t...

Serpent & Galleon, Ink on Paper, in an 18th Century GiltWood Frame.

An exceptional and extremely decorative Italian early 19th century Louis XVI st. giltwood decorative wall decor. The wall decor is centered by a beautiful richly carved tied blooming...