Pair of 18th Century Fantasy Botanical Drawings by Jean Pillement

This trompe l'oeil drawing depicts the artist's tools -- a black and a red crayon, and a folding steel ruler that was painted with silver pigments, which have blackened with age. They're shown on a sheaf of papers that include a medieval manuscript page, a musical score, and a group of prints. The unifying theme is the artistic patronage of the Medici, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, who intermarried with the Habsburgs, who were the Holy Roman Emperors. Among the papers are prints by Stefano Della Bella, the Florentine artist who worked for the Medici. They depict a negro page with a horse, and portraits of Lorenzo Lippi...

Low, deep, and wide, this pair of armchairs is exceptionally comfortable, and the gold and black color scheme is very dramatic. What’s most distinctive about them from a design point...

This pair of Italian Neo-Classical console tables were carved, painted battleship-grey, gilded, and topped with slabs of Carrara marble. Each has a carved cartouche — one with a pair...

This giltwood sculpture was carved in the round, probably in southern France or northern Italy in the 1760s. Her pronounced musculature speaks to the ongoing influence of Michelange...

A neoclassical painted and gilded overdoor panel in the manner of Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, circa 1790.

This Mughal miniature was painted at one of the princely courts of India. It depicts a raven-haired princess in a gold-trimmed saffron-colored silk sari. Under a glowering evening sky she dawdles on a white marble terrace, with a pet fawn on a leash, before a landscape dotted with buildings nestled amongst trees beyond a river. Her hair, falling loosely about her shoulders, rather than carefully dressed on her head, indicates that she is a maiden. The overall mood is one of expectancy. Perhaps walking a pet and catching an evening breeze is a pretext to escape palace scrutiny for a lovers’ assignation. In Mughal India tender sentiments were a bridge to the erotic – and if this seems contradictory, so too is the balance of realism and caricature, and naturalism with the schematic. Both are hallmarks of miniatures painted in this place and time. The earliest Mughal Indian miniatures date to the 16th century. They were inspired by those painted at the refined Moslem courts of the neighboring Persian empire. They incorporated figures in spite of the Moslem faith’s proscription against depicting the human form. Such was the nature of sophisticated courtly life everywhere that beauty and pleasure trumped systems of morality. This was no less the case at the provincial Indian courts, where our miniature, marked by a charming pictorial naiveté, was most likely painted. Yet the artist was undeniably accomplished. His command of perspective, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, is seen in the landscape, which rolls back to a distant horizon, contrary to the flat two-dimensional ones following Indian-painting traditions. And if Mughal artists were influenced by Western art, the compliment was returned by Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others, who collected Indian miniatures (as did, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini who painted in Mughal style the famous miniature of a Persian man...

Two-faced drawing. Studies of characters and harbor scene. With an inscription stating it is from the sketchbook in the collection of Dr. Manuel de Espirito Santo in Lisbon. Ink a...

A fine pair of French 18th-19th century whimsical rococo style chinoiserie oil on canvas, circle of Jean-Baptiste Pillement. (French, 1728-1808). One oil painting depicting an outdoor patio scene of a standing young mother, holding a fan, with her three young children playing with a horse-toy, a parrot and a cat, all surrounded by flowers, plants, trees, planters and flanked by a dragon fountain...

Four Framed 18th century German Botanicals. Newly framed. Linen background with black frames.

18th.entury unframed pencil drawing of an Harpist.

18th Century French Drawing 18TH CENTURY FRENCH DRAWING PORTRAIT OF A LADY FROM THE 18TH CENTURY DONE IN PASTEL THE FRAME IS BACK IN GOLDEN WOOD ...

A fine drawing , ink on paper. A very decorative piece. It is now mounted in a frame. The measurements are with frame 45×47 cm and without frame 22×22 cm.