Piedmontese Drop-Leaf Secretaire Walnut Italy 18th Century

River Landscape with Shepherdess Child and Herds

Oil on canvas. The painting is accompanied by the expertise of two art historians, dr. Dario Succi and Dr. Federica Spadotto. Both confirm the attribution of the painting to Giuseppe Zais, "the master from Belluno unanimously recognized as one of the most original and genuine interpreters of the great landscape painting of the Venetian seventeenth century." In the landscape, under the branches of a tree that frames the left and with the background of blue mountains, a shepherdess and her little son stand out in the foreground, making their animals (sheep and cows) water from the river. the Zais, after an initial training in his native country at the school of his fellow countryman Marco Ricci, who moved to Venice in 1732, soon became part of the ranks of lagoon landscape architects, appreciated and hired for large decorative works in the palaces of the city. In the 1970s the Zais abandoned this production and chose to devote himself only to small works, which reflected an adhesion to the world of the humble and a contemplative dimension of the past, rarely subjects present in the paintings of important clients. The work presented here can be considered an example of this last creative phase, according to art historians in the 70s of the eighteenth century: the Zais proposes a rather barren foothill landscape, where the shepherdess followed by her little son play the their assignment, without any concession to an ideal beauty, but rather with a reminder of a precise, hard, simple real life, made up of effort and affection at the same time. Even the colors of the canvas enhance the artist's empathy for the world he depicts: the warm golden-brown tones of the landscape, illuminated by the blue of the distant peaks reverberating that of the sky, envelop the human and animal figures in the foreground, which they emerge thanks to material brushstrokes and brighter but not bright colors, especially in the fleece of animals and in women's clothes. Peculiar of the Zais are also the faces, round and full, with features that are repeated always identical in the peasant figures of his works, associated with turned bodies, dressed in clothes that look like papier-mâché. The work shows signs of restoration, although still on the first canvas. On the back there is an inscription in German with the name of the previous owner and the date "Christmas 1977". It is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s, with small cracks and lacks.

Oil painting on canvas. The wide view of the Imperial Forums of Rome is part of the vast landscape production of the Grand Tour period, intended for wealthy European aristocrats traveling to Europe - and in particular in Italy, where Rome was considered a must - who wanted a souvenir of the places visited. The Roman Imperial Forums are an architectural complex consisting of a series of monumental buildings and squares, the center of political activity in ancient Rome, built over a period of about 150 years, between 46 BC. and 113 A.D. Despite the enlargements, the fires, the restorations and the reconstructions, during the Antiquity the Imperial Forums kept intact both their architectural conformation and their function. Their almost definitive destruction occurred during the Renaissance at the hands of Pope Julius II (1503-1513), who used the whole area as a quarry for materials to be reused in the building and artistic renovation of the city he initiated. The protests of leading artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo were of little use. In the following centuries various excavation campaigns were undertaken, with greater vigor starting from the nineteenth century, but the area was completely excavated at the beginning of the twentieth century and the ancient architecture was almost completely erased to make room for the construction of via dei Fori Imperiali , which connects Piazza Venezia with the Colosseum. The Forum was rediscovered starting from the sixteenth century also thanks to the Roman view painters who at that time loved to paint the ruins emerging in the pasture area. The view proposed here presents the Imperial Forums before the excavations begun in the nineteenth century, when the road that still crosses them had not yet been built: they are still surrounded by green countryside and the Roman hills stand out in the background. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a re-adapted 19th century frame.