Bust of Virgin Mary Bronz and Solid Wood Italy 20th Century

Oil on canvas. Eastern European School. Signed Szego G. below. These are two works to be proposed aligned because they depict a boy and a girl lying on the same lawn in a mirrored position, as if facing each other, probably intent on a love game: they wear gypsy clothes and have musical instruments with them - she a tambourine and him a violin - which refer to two characters of Slavic ethnicity, from the gypsy world. The whole is lively and serene. The two works are presented in styled frames.

The Portrait of the Queen

Oil painting on canvas. At the bottom right there is an unidentified signature. The large canvas presents an interior scene, set in an eighteenth-century court: in the richly furnished room with velvet curtains, sculptures and large paintings on the walls, a queen (identified by her ermine-edged cloak) poses for the painter who is her portrait, surrounded by the court, smiling ladies and gentlemen, and a prelate, who instead seems rather dissatisfied. The work looks at the production of the painter Arturo Ricci (1854 -1919), who specialized in genre scenes set in eighteenth-century courts. The painting is presented in a frame assembled with elements from the early 1900s.

Winter scene

Oil painting on canvas. Italian school of the early 1900s. The large scene is set in a desolate landscape completely covered in snow: on the left in the foreground, behind a group of carts and mobile homes (probably a gypsy camp) a woman cries while peeking out from behind a cloth; observe the figures moving away from the center of the scene, only silhouettes but clearly definable: two gendarmes flank a man in plain clothes, evidently under arrest. A street lamp and some dry and bare trees occupy the space on the right. The whole scene, painted with broad brushstrokes and without contours, is dominated by the greyish-white shades of the snow, the gray sky, the indistinct peaks in the background, or rather all the naturalistic elements, including one of the two horses tied to rest, while the other elements, the figures, the house, the street lamps, the other horse, and also the footprints on the snow that trace the path of the three figures in the distance, are characterized by brown and ocher colours, rather dull: the whole underlines the drama of the scene, perhaps also the desperation and sense of loneliness and abandonment of the woman. Restored and relined, the painting is not signed on the front (possible signature on the back covered by the relining?). The painting is presented in a period frame.

Roman Landscape

Oil painting on canvas. signed lower left. Further signature and title on the back. Born and lived in Rome, Sdruscia was an interpreter of the so-called Roman School, mainly creating glimpses of his city, in a pictorial style that looks to the great masters of the period, such as Guidi and De Pisis. The work is presented in a frame.

Woman at the Spinning Wheel

Tempera on paper. Signed lower left. Probably a sketch, due to the rapid drafting and unfinished contours, this work presents a young woman sitting spinning at a spinning wheel. The artist Gino Simonetti, painter but also writer, born in the Piacenza area, lived and worked mainly in Turin. the work is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. Inside a rural kitchen, a peasant family allows themselves a moment of celebration: the father plays the mandolin, listened to by the little girl who seems to want to dance, assisted by her mother, and by the other women of the house, smiling as they carry out their domestic tasks. The production of the Neapolitan painter Giuseppe Giardiello always looked to the folklore of Neapolitan rural and peasant life, painting, with intimate and delicate tones, both scenes of domestic life and landscape views animated by figures. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Landscape with River Glimpse 1906

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The Roman-born artist Cesare Maggi established himself as a pointillist landscape painter, portraying alpine landscapes in the Engadine and Aosta Valley, often enlivened by the inclusion of figures and animals. Becoming a friend of the painter Giacomo Grosso in Turin in 1901, he then successfully oriented himself towards the portrait genre, setting aside the pointillist technique. While still favoring high mountain views, he broadened his subjects by also engaging in seascapes and still lifes. In this work, still from the first period, Maggi portrays a glimpse of the countryside crossed by a calm river, bordered by rows of bare trees and small grassy hills, behind which the farmhouses overlook: already no longer linked to the techniques divisionist, the work is rather characterized by dense and opaque mixtures of color, in which the earth, the water and the farmhouses are superimposed in a continuum broken only by the band of sky above. The work is presented in a period frame.

Three figures

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. On the back there is a stamp of the historic Galleria Palmieri in Milan (now no longer existing). The work proposes the typical characters of Franz Borghese';s satirical painting: these are figures that recall, in gestures and clothes, the subjects of 1910, portrayed with almost caricatured, sarcastic features and poses. Borghese's production in fact, after an initial period characterized by a dark and deep, almost dramatic painting, from the 1700s turns into a painting of satire and sarcasm, accentuated by a bright chromatic palette, which aims in particular at the bourgeoisie of the turn of the century. The three figures in this work, two men and a lady, are depicted sideways as they walk in single file in their elegant street clothes: the serious expressions, the distant gazes, seem to underline mutual indifference, as well as the boredom and vacuity of their life, which contrast with the bright and lively colours. The work is presented in a frame.

The path of San Rocco (Camogli)

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower left. On the back this title in pencil. An extremely original landscape painter who experimented with oil painting but also with watercolors and engraving, Raul Viviani came very close to pointillist painting, however developing his own personal technique, characterized by very thin filaments of color in the shape of thin commas, which define the structures of his landscapes. With his transfer to Liguria, which made the landscape of that region the protagonist of his works, his technique changed, moving away from the original divisionism to open up to a broad and summary brushstroke, which finally resulted in the last period in a production of nature death with violent and contrasting colors. This landscape can also be placed in the Ligurian period, which offers a glimpse of a well-known Ligurian locality, still rendered in the characteristic style of Viviani, made of brushstrokes in thin filaments, superimposed on spots of lively color, in the chromatic ranges of the colors of nature. In frame.