Female Bust Bronze Naples Italy 1996 Francesco De Matteis

Oil on slate. Painted on a thick slab of slate, the scene presents the dramatic moment in which Mary, surrounded by a group of pious women, weeps over the body of her Son taken down from the Cross: she abandons herself dramatically in the arms of the two women behind her, while at the her womb rests the inert body of the Son, on whose hand a third woman weeps; above, a group of angels who look out from the open skies, from which the divine Light springs, participate in the lamentation. Mary is the only figure who wears brightly colored clothes, which contrast with the waxy color of the body of Christ resting on her lap, while the other women wear clothes in dull colors, just as neutral are the bodies of the little angels. The figures are placed on a dark background, in which the opening of the sepulcher can hardly be seen: the chromatic effect is rendered thanks also to the pictorial base used, the slate, a stone also known as the "blackboard", as the most important slate quarries are located near the town of Lavagna in Liguria. The pictorial modality recalls the works of Pietro Mera known as the Flemish, a painter originally from Brussels who lived between the 16th and 17th centuries: active for a long time in Venice, working from 1570 to 1603 in the service of Cardinal d'Este, Mera made extensive use slate as a pictorial support for some of his works. The material with its characteristic dark color allowed the artist to create intense luministic contrasts and to emphasize the figures, depicted with a bright chromatic range and illuminated by brilliant touches of light. In good condition, the painting is presented in an antique frame.

Presbyters Iohannis Abissinorum Imperii descriptio

Watercolored etching. It belongs to the famous atlas "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum", first published by Ortelius in 1570 and then replicated numerous times over the decades. At the bottom right there is an indication of the place described, the Abyssinian Empire, and who made it, the presbyter Johannes: Ortelius always rigorously documented the provenance of the geographical maps it printed. Above left a brief genealogy of the rulers of that empire and the date 1572. For the accuracy and scientific precision of his maps, Ortelius is considered one of the founders of historical geography. The etching is in good condition, has some gore of humidity and the central fold of the book of origin. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Italy Renaissance

Chestnut wood sculpture with polychrome lacquer residues depicting Saint Lucia. The saucer with the eyes held in the left hand leads back to the Sicilian Saint.

Original silk curtain applied on a wooden frame. The large painting served as a decorative pictorial element; inside a gilded frame painted with swirls and curls, on a green background, a composition of flowers and leaves is painted, starting from the vase at the bottom center in continuity with the decorations of the frame. The canvas has a small tear at the bottom left.

Portrait of a child

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Palermitan painter, Francesco Camarda distinguished himself for figure painting, dedicated to portraits and the nude, and above all for animalist painting, in the wake of the realist production of the Palizzi brothers. He was able to express a painting with a lively and fresh color. In this small canvas is proposed the portrait of a child sitting on a chair, hooded to frame the plump and smiling face, the direct gaze, the plump little hands resting on the knees in a proud and resolute pose. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Women in prayer

Engraving, monotype. Bottom in pencil, on the right the signature, on the left the title. The Venetian artist Tullio Silvestri constantly expressed in his production the modules of late nineteenth-century lagoon painting, with its symbolist implications, characterized by a loose and rapid sign, in "direct action". He created many monotypes, of which he was a skilled performer. He loved depicting moments of the country's life, facts and popular figures; he painted processions, glimpses, tavern figures, buskers, portrayed ironers, peasant women, lacemakers, card players and, as in the monotype proposed here, women in prayer. The work is presented in a frame.

Male Portrait in Profile

Oil on cardboard. signed lower right, with a dedication "to friend G. Rutelli". Of humble origins, Angelo Dall'Oca Bianca, even once he became an established and appreciated artist, frequenting the Italian and international artistic-cultural environment, always maintained the bond with his city, a continuous source of inspiration for his artistic production, and for its poor; in 1939 he built the Dall'Oca Village in Verona, for the benefit of the poor of the city, and in 1941 he made a will, leaving all his money and his paintings to the city of Verona for charitable works. His painting was always of a purely realist mold, influenced above all by his contact with Giacomo Favretto who allowed him to enrich his painting technique with bright colors and a large and vaporous style, and by the use of photography as a memory for the representation of truth. . The work, a portrait of a male figure seen in profile, is lively in the colors. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Landscape with Houses 1875

Oil on the table. Signed and dated lower right. Further signature and date on the back. Artist from the province of Pisa, trained first at the Academy of his city and later at that of Florence, thanks to contacts with Telemaco Signorini and Giovanni Fattori, Francesco Gioli landed on painting from life with a rural subject, creating works - such as the one presented here - which constitute the expression of Tuscan Naturalism, in which he managed to convey the nostalgia of the past and the discomfort with the advance of progress. At the beginning of the twentieth century he oriented his production on Florentine views, giving particular emphasis to the atmospheric and luministic rendering in an impressionist sense. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Face of Madonna 1942

Oil on the table. signed and dated lower right. The painting takes up the models of 15th century Tuscan painting, showing the Madonna half-length with a landscape in the background. Aldo Marzi was a Sienese artist who divided his activity between painting and teaching at the Art Institute of his city. It is known above all for having made some of the banners for the Palio di Siena. The work is presented in a style frame.

Nude of a Woman

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower right. Istvan Mero was a Hungarian impressionist painter who trained first in Budapest, then in Paris and Munich. His pictorial production often proposes popular figurative subjects, such as this female portrait depicting a young naked woman caught between the sheets, ... reading a newspaper, losing all erotic meaning to emphasize rather a moment of domestic intimacy. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a contemporary frame with small lacks.

Landscape with fossil

Oil painting on canvas. Signature, date and title on the back. It is the work of the Milanese painter Giulio Scapaticci, of the artists of the pictorial-political current who at the turn of the 1950s-1960s was defined as “Existential Realism”. Immediately considered an artist sensitive to existential issues, he began to paint the Milan of the 50s and 60s with its typical railing houses, the peeling windows that open onto a darkly colored urban landscape, the gray industrial suburbs and desolate, quartered oxen and fish hanging on nails. In the mid-1970s, he leaves Milan and moves to the Oltrepò Pavese, where his painting is transformed, goes beyond the previous dark and monochromatic introspective experiences and in his paintings appears a rural world made of more lively and luminous tones: farmhouses, still natures, still lifes, insects, rivers, resting sandy loops. Back in Milan, from the 1980s he returns to depict a more painful humanity, with insects that transform and settle to cover sensations of solitude and voluntary silences. The work proposed here is part of the production attributable to the years of Oltrepò Pavese. The scene is divided into two distinct panels: on the left a glimpse of the countryside dominated in the background by the black profile of an industrial city, with the silhouette of an insect in the foreground; on the right, the corpse of a fish, the fossil of the title. The colors are light, but a greyness dominates that emphasizes the gloom of the scene. The painting has a slight damage in the upper right. It is presented in a frame.

Glimpse of a snowy town

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower right. Born in 1905, Gaetano Valbusa worked for over forty years as a worker in the Brescia Mechanical Workshops, until retirement, devoting himself to painting only as a passion. Landscape painter, thanks to business trips he was able to portray "en plein air" glimpses of the whole world, even if the glimpses of the places in Brescia are the most recurring subject. Affiliated to the Brescian Artists Association, he was able to exhibit his works and make himself known by critics. In his canvases the landscapes are permeated with great serenity and tranquility, an elegy of serene memories of real life. The glimpse proposed here is presented in a frame.