PAINTINGS ONLINE | ANCIENT AND CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

The Smuggler's Kitchen

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower left. On the back the title in pencil. In Giuseppe Solenghi's wide production, the urban landscapes of Milan or the Venetian lagoon views prevail, but there are also various glimpses of the countryside, mainly of Lombardy, as well as rustic interiors. In this glimpse of a rustic kitchen, with the large fireplace in which the large pot is cooking on the fire, and numerous objects of daily use, we find Solenghi's exemplary pictorial technique which uses a rather material color but applied with quick brushstrokes, with delicacy of colours, which in a few ranges fade into different variations, create a rural atmosphere. The painting is presented in a frame.

Mariuccia and Guido

Pencil and marker on paper. Individually signed below. These are two drawings in which the artist, with a continuous line, traces proper names, in a geometric up and down pattern. Bruno Munari, a multifaceted artist who loved playing with movement and light in the search for new imaginative creative solutions, dedicated much of his time to teaching the approach to art, creating both at the Brera Academy and directly in schools , creative art workshops. In this context, one of the activities proposed to the children was to write their own name in a creative way: these drawings express precisely this type of creativity, applied to the names of people they know. The drawings come from the private collection of family and friends and are presented in a frame.

Le Bionnay 1892

Oil painting on canvas. Signed, dated and located lower right. This is a small glimpse of the town of Le Bionnay, located in Haute-Savoie: the damage caused by an avalanche which destroyed one of the village's huts is depicted. The work is presented in a mid-20th century gilded frame (small defects).

Peasant Girl with Hens

Oil on wooden board. Signed lower right. Giuseppe Gheduzzi, an artist born in the family of artists, distinguished himself as a landscape painter but above all for his interiors with figures, stables, antique shops together with fresh orientalist themes and effective seascapes resulting from his frequent stays in Liguria. Shown here is the exterior of a farmhouse, with a female figure feeding the chickens. The painting is presented in a period frame.

In the Sheepfold, 1857

Oil on wooden board. Signed and dated in the center of the left margin. On the back there is a label from an art exhibition held in Sondrio in 1966 and one from the Martina art gallery in Turin. Eugène Verboeckhoven, a Belgian artist, distinguished himself for his paintings of animals, inserted into landscapes or placed in the interiors of stables. He belonged to that school of artists who, starting from the observation of nature, created compositions studied in detail, idealized reproductions of reality. Thanks to his dexterity in depicting animals, many artists called on him to enrich their works with some of his animals and figures. Between 1841 and 1842 he visited Italy, Switzerland and Scotland. The work presented here, an interior of a sheepfold with sheep and chickens scratching around, is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. The large landscape portrays a stretch of wooded countryside, crossed by a stream, near hills. On the path beyond the stream, a small figure of a traveler, walking away. The naturalistic element also dominates in the colors, with a vast range of greens and browns, which are also found in the stream as reflections of the plants. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

The Violin Player

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The Milanese artist, son of the famous painter Alcide Davide Campestrini, dedicated himself to still life, figure painting and Alpine landscapes, with a technique linked to his father's school and the late nineteenth-century tradition. painting presented in a contemporary frame.

Mixed media on cardboard. Portrait of a young woman who appears to be in mourning, both due to her completely black clothing and her sad and understood look. Painted in the style of the early 1900s, a period to which the woman's dress also refers. At the bottom right there is an undeciphered signature. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Oil on cardboard. Suggestive mountain view that frames a rocky and barren peak, surmounted by a few pines towering in the centre; on the rocky spur a very small human figure is outlined, contemplating the landscape; in the background the snow-capped peaks, which fade into the sky. The painting is presented in a contemporary frame.

Oil painting on canvas. The scene is set inside a popular farmhouse: in front of the large fireplace, where a large pot is boiling above the fire, a woman sits with a child in her arms, while two other women wait on the threshold looking out, with the plate in their hands, and another child eats his soup sitting on no stool. The scene is dominated by earthy colours, with a single glimpse of light entering from the threshold, framing a blue-white sky. The painting is presented in a contemporary gilded frame.

Mixed technique (pencil, pen, brown ink and white chalk) on paper. Italian school of the early 19th century. The scene represents the meeting between a high priest and a leader: if he is followed by his entire army, with grim and armed soldiers of different ranks, the priest is followed by all the people who praise the winner, while two young women on their knees they offer wreaths of flowers. Behind the scene, the mighty walls with the entrance door to a city, towards which the priest points, almost as if handing it over to the leader. The priest's clothing, in particular the presence of the so-called "Decision" breastplate that he wears, refers to an Israelite priest, and therefore the city could be Jerusalem; instead the clothing of the victorious leader, with the helmet surmounted by two horses, refers to Alexander the Great, who actually conquered the city in 332 BC. The drawing is presented in a carved wooden frame from the late 19th century.

Oil painting on canvas. The large scene depicts Mary, already Assumption into heaven and supported on the clouds by little angels, receiving the Crown from the Holy Trinity. This coronation expresses the apotheosis of Mary, who by becoming "Queen of Heaven" becomes the intermediary between the earth, Humanity, and Heaven, the Divinity: what is not given to man to see becomes possible through Mary who in this glorification is more than ever the tenacious thread that binds us to the Almighty, the true "gate of heaven", as it is defined by the Fathers of the Church. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in an early 20th century frame.

Oil painting on canvas. The Saint, in the foreground, is depicted on his knees, adoring the Crucifix which he holds with one hand, while the other points downwards at the skull, the traditional "Memento mori". The figure is placed inside a cave, from whose opening you can glimpse an arid and barren landscape; the light enters from a hole in the rock and radiates linearly on the Cross to reach the face of the Saint. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a 19th century wooden frame.

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.

Along the Banks of the Chiese in Gavardo 1940

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower right. On the back in pencil the title, location and date. Carlo Vittori was a landscape painter from Cremona, linked to his land. The view presented here portrays a stretch of the Chiese river which, on its journey towards the Po, crosses the countryside of first Brescia and then Mantua, here near Gavardo, a small municipality in the Brescia area. The painting is presented in a frame.

Landscape with Mill

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower right. Carlo Vittori, an artist from Cremona, mainly portrayed the landscapes of his Po Valley. Here he proposes a countryside inhabited by a mill, to which the water arrives through an overhead canalization. The painting is presented in chronicle.

Duck Flight

Bronze sculpture. Signature engraved on the base. Gino Masciarelli, a sculptor originally from Abruzzo but who lived in the Milan area, after having also worked at the Experimental Center for Scientific Research “F. Marinotti” in Lombardy, dealing with high-frequency cinematographic shooting, learned to capture the instability of bodies in movement and the dissolution of matter in space in many of his works. In the sculptures "Human groups" and "Flight" - to which the work presented here belongs -, the dynamism of flight can be observed almost as if it were a photographic sequence. The artist himself said: "Only 8 seconds made an impression on 300 meters of film, the aim was to slow down what the human eye cannot see, I wanted to capture the movement and the projection of these seconds lasted a couple of hours".

Interior of Stable

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower right. The Cremonese painter Carl Vittori specialized in landscape views of his Po Valley lands or in scenes with animal figures, always linked to peasant life, like this stable interior inhabited by a donkey. The chromatic and luminous choices are suggestive. The work is presented in a frame.

Seated Figure

Oil on wooden board. Signed lower right. The painter Salvatore Sportelli, of Apulian origin but who lived for a long time in Lodi, where he taught (a posthumous exhibition of his was recently held in the city), produced numerous popular figures and genre scenes characterized by a look at post-impressionism. The work is presented in a frame.

Sunny Landscape

Fresco on canvas. Signed lower right. Further signature and technique on the back. Placed in the informal Emilian naturalism, Bruno Saetti's painting is distinguished by a significant love for the pictorial material, rich and consistent, pasty and fermenting, but also open to the modulations of luminous vibration. His series of "frescoes" with the Sun as the dominant subject is rich, as in this work, which presents a large bright sun shining on a brick red background, above an indefinite landscape, where only a basilica can be recognized at the top right. If Saetti's Emilian origin is evident in the warm tones of the red bricks and in the very peculiar taste of the material (the favorite fresco), on the other hand the Venetian contamination is recognizable (Saetti lived for a long time in Venice) in his lingering on the color, on its luminous vibrations, on the feeling of astonished amazement of space. The work is presented in a frame.