Antique Painting The Parlour of the Nuns of San Zaccaria '800 - Copy from Francesco Guardi

Stable interior

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The work was previously acquired at the Sotheby's auction in Milan on 10/12/2007. It was exhibited in 1991 in the exhibition "Giovanni Sottocornola. Images from a collection" held in Milan at the Silbernagl Gallery. After an initial pictorial phase dedicated to portraits and still lifes, in the 1880s Giovanni Sottocornola approached social themes, which were becoming the favorite subjects of young Lombard painters attentive to the poorest aspects of society, linked to the adoption of original artistic techniques. Sottocornola embraced the practice of pointillist painting, of which he wrote in 1895 "For now it is certain, I am convinced that there is no other painting more capable of conveying certain sensations than this one". However, this type of painting remained entirely focused on light, on its uncertain tonal vibrations, as happens in the Interior of a stable, created towards the end of the 1980s, where the plays of light and shadow play and create the effects visual in the brushstrokes of color played on a few chromatic ranges, those of browns, expressed in a wide variety of shades. The work is presented in a period frame.

Oil on canvas. 19th-century Northern European school. Evocative and choreographic view of a forest with a stream flowing through it in the autumn colors. The painting was relined in the late 19th century; it still has several paint losses. It is presented in a frame contemporary with the relining.

Crouching Nude Figure 1860 ca.

Oil on canvas. The work is accompanied by a photo certificate by scholar Angelo Dragone, who also notes that it was published in his catalogue "Lorenzo Delleani, l'opera e il suo tempo" (Lorenzo Delleani, l'opera e il suo tempo), in vol. II, p. 105, number 21. From a private collection in Turin, the work was presented at the Sant'Agostino auction in Turin (with a starting price of €5,000). Delleani, who initially painted mainly historical subjects, gradually moved towards plein air landscape painting, especially of his native Piedmont valleys. He also painted several figures, especially popular ones. His nudes are rarer, although scenes of bathers at the lake or on the beach are recurrent, with several nude female figures, including the figure presented here. The work is presented in a period frame.

Portrait of a Young Woman

Oil on panel. Signed lower left. Parisian painter Edouard D'Otemar primarily established himself as a portraitist of female figures, whom he painted with nuanced chromatic effects and impressionist-style lighting. The work is presented in an early 20th-century frame, with some missing parts.

Oil on canvas. The work, painted in the style of early 17th-century Spanish painting, is actually from the late 19th century. It depicts a noblewoman wearing a ruff, the stiff, decorative, pleated collar typical of both men's and women's clothing from the 16th and 17th centuries. The work has been previously restored and relined. It is presented in a mid-19th-century gilded frame, inserted into a larger 20th-century frame.

Tempera on pith paper. Chinese, Canton, Qing dynasty, ca. 1860. A collection of twenty-eight paintings depicting Chinese courtiers, scholars, and merchants. Originally kept in an album, they are presented here in a beautiful frame decorated with embroidered floral fabrics. Pith paper is a thin, translucent material derived from the pith of the Tetrapanax papyrifer tree, or "pith plant," native to China and Taiwan. Pith paper entered painting to meet the growing demand for small, inexpensive, and easily transportable souvenirs following the massive growth of trade with China in the first quarter of the 19th century. Because many were sold in albums and thus protected from light, they retain their vibrant colors even today.

Oil on canvas. French school of the late 18th - early 19th century. Portrait of a gentleman in elegant bourgeois dress. The canvas has slight tears and requires cleaning. It is presented in a gilded 19th century frame.

Female Portrait

Oil on canvas. Signed on the right, halfway up the canvas. It is the portrait of a woman in mourning, a young widow, as can be deduced not only from her black dress, but rather from her headdress and especially from the cameo with a male portrait, which she wears hanging from her neck. Achille Zo was a French artist (from Bayonne, a town in the Pyrenees that was culturally influenced by the Basque Country), who despite having repeatedly stayed in Paris and Bordeaux, where he trained artistically, then made several trips to Spain, both to Madrid (in 1856) and to Andalusia (1860), producing for several years works with historical subjects or Spanish genre scenes. At the end of the 1860s, he turned instead to Orientalism. There are also several portraits in his production. The painting proposed here, on the first canvas, is presented in a beautiful contemporary frame from the second half of the 19th century.

Ludovico il Moro's farewell to his wife..

Mixed media (pencil, pen, brown ink and white chalk) on paper. Italian school of the early 19th century. Ludovico Maria Sforza cries at the tomb of his young wife Beatrice d'Este (1475 -1497); around him the friars of Santa Maria delle Grazie and on his left Bramante and Leonardo. On the short side of the marble canopy of the tomb there is the Sforza coat of arms, with two snakes and two eagles. Il Moro was profoundly shaken by the early death in childbirth of his very young wife Beatrice, his companion in his private but also political life, as well as his husband's, a patron of the artistic geniuses of their court, such as Leonardo da Vinci. and Bramante, authors of many pictorial and architectural works of the Visconti-Sforza court. Various versions of this episode are known, especially from the nineteenth century, from that of 1815 by Giovanni Battista Cigola at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, to that of Alessandro Reati of around 1850. The painting is presented in a carved wooden frame from the late 19th century.

Siege Scene

Oil on canvas. Outside the fortifications of a city, a commander, surrounded by his soldiers, is about to light the fuse of the cannon. The army defends the citadel outside the walls and the soldiers scan the horizon looking downwards: this leads us to place the scene on the fortifications of a city, in particular those of Genoa, that rise on the mountains behind it and from which the Genoese defended the city from attacks from the sea; the Genoa setting is also supported by the banner that flies over the walls, the Saint George Cross (red cross on a white background), flag of the Republic of Genoa. The shape of the armor, weapons and clothing would refer to the siege of Genoa in 1522. It is therefore the nineteenth-century representation of a historical episode, which is then part of that pictorial production widespread in Italy in the nineteenth century, inspired by the new historical novel popular in literature. On the back of the frame there is the name G. Boni, together with a number that refers to participation in an official exhibition. Giovanni Boni was a pupil of the Brera Academy, in particular a follower of Giuseppe Sogni, an artist who was among the first to favour historical painting in its innovative romantic declinations. Not much is known about Boni, neither from a biographical point of view nor from his production. Of his certain attribution we know only the Nude of Man (painted Academy) with which he won the first prize for the Scuola del Nudo in Brera in 1852. The piece expresses the figures and the pathos of the scene with expressive efficiency; the characters in the foreground are very well characterized in their poses, expressions, in the details of the clothes and weapons, while the other figures fade into the background, suggesting the presence of a large army. The painting, still on the first canvas, shows small widespread losses of colour. It is presented in a frame in style.

Oil on canvas. Bolognese school of the late 17th century. In the foreground, occupying the entire left part of the scene, lies the sleeping Baby Jesus, reclining backward in a pose of complete abandonment to sleep, a serene smile on his face; on the right side, diagonally delimited by the raised cloth, two figures, presumably two shepherds, gaze at the child with a gaze of deep and serious adoration and are making the gesture of covering him, a gesture that indicates tenderness but symbolically prefigures the sacrifice of Christ (the deposition of his body after the Crucifixion). The supine position of the Child, adored by Mary or by shepherds, was introduced by Guido Reni, who created several works with this subject, later widely taken up by his followers and by the 17th-century Bolognese school. As in Guido Reni's works, in this painting too, the light emanates directly from the Baby Jesus, illuminating the devout faces of those who adore him. Previously relined, the painting shows traces of extensive restoration. It is presented in a period frame.

Oil on canvas. Central European School, mid-19th century. In the center of the scene, before a throne surmounted by a red velvet canopy and flanked by royal insignia, a king is settling a dispute between two groups of men, represented by several dignitaries in civilian clothes. Behind them, two different flags rise from the crowd; these are likely two political factions from the same city. The city's skyline in the background places the scene in a Central European context. The painting was applied in the early 20th century to plywood. It is presented in a regilded, late-19th-century frame.