Furniture Mahogany Veneer Brass Glass Foam Padding and Fabric 1950s

Italy 17th century

Seventeenth-century sideboard with front with two doors surmounted on the top by a decorative support. The whole piece of furniture is made of walnut split into two by large pilasters, with a projecting cornice with indentations decorated with gilded highlights like the decorative frames and roundels. Italy 17th century

19th Century / 1801 - 1900

English console resting on a shelf and equipped with two monopod griffins shaped uprights; the rear panel consists of three mirror plates. Entirely veneered in amboina briar, it has a bronze frame and brass covered top edges.

Paris Third Quarter of the 19th Century

Napoleon III two-door sideboard, made by the cabinetmaker Georges-Alphonse-Bonifacio Monbro. Structure in ebony veneered oak, embellished with semi-precious stones and gilded bronzes. White marble top arranged within the edge, front with two doors decorated with reserves with vases of flowers and fruit made of stones in the centre, uprights at forty-five degrees, bracket feet. The bronzes, chiseled and gilded, portray leafy friezes, phytomorphic elements, godrons, rosettes, masks and volutes. The pilasters of the uprights are also made of gilded bronze, decorated with bunches and grape leaves and culminating with a caryatid and a telamon. Interior doors veneered in mahogany. Stamped in several parts on the hull and on the bronzes. Restorations and replacements.

Oil on wooden board. Central Italian school of the second half of the 16th century. The sacred scene of the Annunciation sees the two protagonist figures placed in the foreground in an interior that corresponds to Mary's room. The young woman is sitting in front of a small wooden desk, supported by figures of angels, on which rests the prayer book and a vase with small flowers; at her feet, the sewing basket. Mary's body is partially turned backwards, in a twisted movement, almost as if she were trying to escape, as if she wanted to get away from the other figure, that of the Archangel Gabriel. He stands on the right, majestic and elegant, with one hand holding a lily and the other pointing upwards above him, where the white dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, is emerging from a gap of light. In the background, tall columns with drapes surmount the platform on which Mary's bed rests. The composition refers, in the figurative style and in the chromatic choices, to the already mannerist painting of the schools of central Italy: in particular there is a strong concordance of style and composition with some works of the same subject by the painter Bastiano Vini Detto Bastiano Veronese (1525-1530 / 1602), who lived and worked in Pistoia from around 1540. It is in this city that some of his Annunciations are found: in particular the one in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (an altarpiece measuring over two meters in height), shows clear similarities on a formal and compositional level with the one presented here . There is concordance in the setting of the sacred scene: a room, in the background of which is a curtain that partially covers a bed, furnished with the elements essential to the narrative, the lectern and the chair richly decorated with caryatids of cherubs or angels that seem to be carved in the wood. The compositional scheme corresponds, albeit with slight variations, with the two figures arranged "frieze-like" on the same laying plane, and the somatic features of the Virgin and the Archangel also correspond. However, the floor differs, which, while it is homogeneous in our table, in the Pistoia one presents itself with alternating checkerboard colors, but it seems that this design of the floor was added in a later period, on the occasion of the reconstruction of the altar in 1637 -1639, in pendant with that of another work by the same Sebastiano Vini in the same church, a Sacred Conversation. It therefore seems rather certain that our panel was painted looking at the work of Bastiano Veronese, probably at the specific request of the client, and before the change in the floor, therefore dating back to the second half of the 16th century. The painting has undergone restoration, with the application of two reinforcements to the back of the panel. It is presented in a late 19th century setting. (Reference for the Pistoia altarpiece: Catalog of cultural heritage https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900035285)

The denial of Peter

Oil on oak board, coming from an important historical Florentine collection. The collection started by an ancestor of the family who was in Vienna in 1798 and then in Wurzburg until 1813, as a companion of exile of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand III. The collection was transferred to Florence after the fall of Napoleon, and its importance is proved by a copy of an inventory compiled in 1881. At number 14 of it (corresponding to the one shown on the cartouche at the back of the table), the compiler's description:...a two feet and four and a half inches long wooden footboard, and one foot and eight and a half-inch high, representing Peter who denies Jesus Christ to the maiden in Anna's house. We see the Savior from far away carried to that pontiff to be examined, in the midst of a crowd and a quantity of soldiers. In the 1960s, an initial attribution to Bruegel was denied and relocated to Francken. The composition was obviously successful because other versions of the workshop were known (see for example, an oil on copper with identical subject and dimensions in the Koller auction on 18/09/2015). Presented in a refurbished frame.

18th Century / 1701 - 1800

Large chest of drawers with barocchetto shelf from Emilia, with the typical curved and rounded on silhouette on the front and on the sides, which can be opened. Supported by curved feet, the under-the-top band is shaped, it has three drawers and two upper ones side by side, under the top. The shelf has a grooved base with a drawer and a smaller drawer on the front: the upper part with glass panels on the front and on the sides used to be a display case for a statue, which originally could only be opened with a door on the back, but it was modified in the 19th century by adding a wooden panel on the back, while a small door and a shelf have been added on the front. Maple burl veneer with walnut edges, the interiors are in poplar, the handles are in bronze with pendants and nozzles with a coat of arms depicting a pair of rampant lions topped by a two-headed eagle with the imperial crown.