18th Century Still Life with Fruits and Bisquits Painting Oil on Canvas

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...

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, 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...

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...

An exceptionally fine quality example of an elaborately framed English Still Life of fruits Oil Painting on canvas, in the style of Oliver Clare or Eloise Harriet Stannard, second qu...

A French framed oil on canvas still-life painting from the 19th century depicting fruits, signed Morin. Created in France during the 19th century, this oil on canvas painting features mouth-watering cherries and prunes displayed in wicker baskets and flanked with a copper strainer...

This large, old master still life painting is a perfectly balanced composition of fruit and game birds. In the foreground a rabbit is stretched out. A copper kettle and a basket are ...

Pair of 18th century Spanish anonymous "bodegón" still life oil on canvas with frame, from Mallorca.