18th Century Christ and the Samaritan at the Well Painting Oil on Canvas

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...

Venetian school, 18th century Study with the head of a cherub Measures: Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm - with frame 54.5 x 49.5 cm The present qualifies as a study or preparatory sketch by virtue of the structural and figural layout; by reason of formal and substantial evidence, it can be traced back to the mature neo-Venetian style, which in the eighteenth century had begun to produce figurations of extreme typological pathetism and formal expressionism. The contemporary painting experience of Tiepolo commanded the Venetian art scene, once the lesson of Pier Francesco Mola (1612-1666) was overruled. The delicate putto head offered here, in which a cherub is recognizable due to the happy iconographic solution of the wings placed under the angel's face, is outlined with a vigorous vitalism. A foreshortened point of view illuminates his face in a grazing way, probing his features with strong shadows and with a youthful blush that orange his cheeks. The veristic perfection with which the artist arranges the semblant is of marvelous expressiveness. The eyes are swollen with intensity, and together with the general setting of the head they denounce a conscious reflection on the physiognomy, peculiar within the emerging context of Venetian painting. The painting in question is affected by the large-scale productions, both monumental and perspective, at the time in vogue in the territory of the Serenissima. Conceived through a vision from below, the portrait reveals from the Venetian Rococo that particular predilection for the open and clear, airy ways, denounced in the first instance by Tiepolo. The conscious detachment from the Cortona-style decorativism and from the repeated layout solutions then in vogue allow us to approach the present to the production of Francesco Fontebasso...

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...

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...