Pair of Wall Lights With 5 Lights Wrought Iron Italy 19th-20th Century

Oil on canvas. The girl is sitting on a step in a garden; she holds a pansy in her hands and at her feet are some cut roses, from the potted plant behind her; in the background on the right, you can see the sea in the distance. The shades of rotten green dominate, fading from the sky, to the girl's dress, to the plant, maintaining a chromatic uniformity interrupted only by the rosy face and hands and scattered flowers. The painting. restored and relined, it is presented in a frame built on an ancient wooden base.

Oil on canvas. The scene refers to the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the two protagonists of a well-known story narrated by Apuleius in his work The Metamorphoses. Psyche, a mortal with a beauty equal to Venus, becomes the wife of Cupid-Cupid without however knowing who her husband is, who appears to her only in the darkness of the night. Discovering her identity at the instigation of her envious sisters, she is forced, before being able to reunite with her divine consort, to carry out a series of tests, at the end of which she will obtain immortality. The myth has been widely re-proposed over the centuries, both in painting and in sculptural art, just remember the famous sculptural group of Canova. In this painting, the two lovers delight in their amorous games in a patch of green adorned with a fountain and a lapwing, in the company of two cupids playing; on the right we can see, hidden, a faun spying on the couple. The canvas, already relined, has a hole in the center, in correspondence with Psyche's arm, a slight tear in the upper left and small drops of color. It is presented in an adapted 19th century frame.

Concert of the Friars

Inlaid panel in various woods and mother of pearl. Signed Fratopolino lower right. The scene depicts a group of friars who improvise an instrumental concert in the probable cellar of the convent, which serves as a pantry. The author is the Bergamo artist Giulio Masnada, who from 1903 assumed the nickname of Fratopolino (or Fra Topolino), Excellent inlayer, he created various works on religious subjects for the churches of Bergamo (inlays for the wooden choirs, for the chapels, for the benches ...). Due to his unruly life (in particular due to alcohol abuse), he lost several jobs and ended up devoting himself to the production of small pictures of genre scenes of a profane subject, such as the one proposed, which he sold at moderate prices to survive. The subjects of his scenes were never his own, but inspired by famous paintings or drawn from drawings by friendly painters. In his haste to complete the work, he often resorted to the expedient of inserting elements in other materials between the inlays, or even retouching them with a brush. The work is presented in a beautiful coeval inlaid frame.

Embroidery on canvas. Nineteenth century. The embroidery is performed on a rectangular fabric with fringes on the edges and with tassels at the four corners. The embroidered design proposes, within a floral frame, a series of drawings arranged on four horizontal bands, which include architectural structures, a carriage, human and animal figures, small scenes of everyday life with everyday objects and floral decorations. The canvas is presented in a frame.

Venetian glimpse

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Gustavo Boldrini, born in Venice in 1927, attended in his hometown, first the Art Institute and then the Academy of Fine Arts. After an experimental start, his painting focuses on an "expressionist" research, alternating Fauvist chromatic lighting , to almost monochromatic landscape studies, to severe figure compositions, which reveal the artist's sensitivity to social and existential themes. He always tends towards formal synthesis, in which objects and characters are represented with great lyrical and narrative freedom, characterized by essential and unmistakable features. The glimpse of his city is recurrent, as in this work where a white church stands out in the center, overlooking a canal with a stylized gondola. In frame.

Female Portrait

Mixed technique (pastels and tempera) on cardboard. Signed top left. Originally from Alessandria and trained at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, she devoted herself mainly to landscapes, figures, and above all to portraits, making them of various personalities from the world of entertainment and Italian cinema. Dina Bellotti is also known as "the painter of the popes". Starting from the first half of the seventies, in fact, he made some portraits of Paul VI and, later, of John Paul II, kept in the Vatican and used as official images of the popes. The portrait proposed here is that of a refined lady, who lets herself be portrayed in a casual and languid pose: the white with blue shades of the woman's blouse stands out against the beige monochrome of the background, of the skirt, of the armchair, which fade without contrast even in the skin color. The painting is presented in a contemporary frame.

Tempera on wood. Russian icon of the 19th century. Christ Pantocrator holds the Bible in one hand, while blessing the world with the other. Face and hands painted, surmounted by finely worked golden riza. The small icon is presented in a gilded wooden frame, placed in an opening rounded case.

Stories of Jesus and Mary

Tempera on wood. In the twelve panels that surround the central scene, which depicts the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, episodes from the life of Mary and Jesus are depicted. The scenes are accompanied by writing in Cyrillic. The table has diffuse but small drops in color some lack.

Male face

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. The Milanese artist Carlo Jacono was an illustrator and painter: his unmistakable style, the mastery in the execution, the prolificacy and artistic ability in over 50 years of career, the knowing how to lend himself to different genres and the great success at readers and publishers made him one of the masters of Italian illustration and one of the most appreciated and well-known names on the national and international illustration scene. He was also known as the "Man of the circle", a pseudonym due to the layout of many of his covers in pink, police, science fiction, Italian, English, Swedish, Norwegian, American (we recall, among many, the covers of the series "Il giallo Mondadori "), or more simply with the surname only, Jacono, with which he signed himself. Starting from 1970 Jacono also embarked on a career as a painter, exhibiting in personal exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, preferring a figurative vein with a romantic connotation that finds its masterpiece in the series of "The warriors". They said of this production: "they are apparitions of warriors of other times, which the imagination comes to realize even in the minute features of the face, and to imagine in the most reckless actions". Probably the painting presented here is also part of this series: it is the face of a Nordic warrior, as can be deduced from the fur headdress that frames the proud and concentrated face in which the cold blue eyes stand out, and from the burnished metal collar engraved with signs graphics that refer to the Nordic runes; half-length, the shoulder straps of the armor can be seen. The painting is presented in a frame.

Portrait of Dr. Libero Mazza 1972

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. On the back the handwritten "Portrait of Dr. Libero Mazza, prefect of Milan, made in my studio", followed by the artist's further signature and the date. Venetian but Milanese by adoption, Attilio Melo studied at the Brera Academy and together with his father, an appreciated fresco painter. From an early age he established himself as a portraitist; in his long and brilliant career, figures of national and international fame posed for him, from different worlds: politicians (such as De Gasperi, Gronchi) and religious (Cardinal Martini), artists from the world of entertainment, music, theater (Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren ....) and dance (Rudolf Nureyev). He was also a landscape painter, even of foreign places, but always favoring the landscape of his lands of origin and inspiration, Milan and Venice. His style is peculiar, made up of long brushstrokes, almost stripes of color, which create an evocative chromatic setting around the portrayed figures. The painting proposed here is presented in a contemporary frame.

Sant'ambrogio

Original oil painting on cardboard for the preparation of the stained glass window of the church of Viggiù (Varese), for which the master Aligi Sassu made many works. This painting comes with expertise on picture signed by Alessandro Grassi, master glassmaker who collaborated with many Italian and foreign architects and artists and realized the final work in collaboration with the artist. The painting depicts St. Ambrose - patron Saint of Milan - in the act of denying the entry into the church to the emperor Theodosius I, who was guilty of many crimes even though he was a Christian. In frame. 20th century.

Oil on plywood. Martinelli signed lower right. Isola dei Pescatori is the smallest of the Borromean islands of Lake Maggiore. The only one of these islands to be permanently inhabited, it hosts a small village whose inhabitants still practice fishing. The painting is presented in a contemporary guilloché frame.