Stormy Navy Oil on Canvas Italy XIX Century

The Friar and the Painter 1887

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. Genre scene set in a museum environment, where a young painter is trying her hand at reproducing a work, under the stern gaze of a friar. It is the work of Giulio Sommati di Mombello, a Turin artist from a noble family, who was artistically trained at the Albertina Academy in Turin, the city where he lived and worked, while exhibiting in all Italian cities. He painted genre scenes, portraits, urban views (particularly his markets in Turin), landscapes, and from the first decade of the 1900s, also numerous marinas, following his discovery and falling in love with the Ligurian Riviera. He had among his admirers the King (from whom he obtained the appointment as Knight of the Kingdom) Queen Margherita, Elisabetta di Sassonia Duchess of Genoa, the Promoter of Turin, Princes, municipal and national art galleries and art lovers scattered in many regions of 'Italy. He is considered "certainly a great poet and his poetry was expressed in the colors of nature (mother and teacher) that he portrayed on the canvas." The work is presented in a style frame.

Arabic coffee

Oil on the table. signed lower left. An orientalist subject who proposes the Arab coffee as a place also responsible for smoking the hookah, an activity in which two men are intent: the scene is set outdoors, in front of the vaulted entrance to the room, with the minaret in the background. The work is part of the most characteristic production of Fabio Fabbi, a Bolognese painter who, following his travels to the East starting from 1886, devoted himself almost exclusively to this pictorial genre, in which he was able to associate the themes of exoticism and travel with a quick and lively sketching. From the early 1900s, Fabbi also devoted himself to a career as an illustrator, illustrating numerous novels of classical literature, but preferring those of adventure, in particular the Salgarian novels, in which he was able to express his passion for exoticism. The proposed work is presented in a style frame.

Oil on canvas. Unsigned but pleasantly made, the large portrait shows a little girl placed outdoors, on a hillside path near a lake, surrounded by spring flowers; she is dressed in pink, holds a tangerine in one hand and a small parasol in the other that matches the socks and the orange lilies blooming along the path, around her neck she wears a necklace with large yellow beads. Despite the vivacity of the colors and the setting, the little girl is extremely serious and composed, almost sad. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil on canvas. Portrait of an austere gentleman, in a meditative pose, a man of letters or a scholar depicted in his study, with books scattered on the desk behind him. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

Female portrait 1869

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated on the right. Little is known about this French artist, who was basically a portrait painter, as his known production all fall into this category of subject. The painting denotes expressive intensity and good pictorial ability. Restored and relined, it is presented in a period frame.

Oil on the table. Italian school of the second half of the 19th century. The painting, a garland of multicolored and variegated flowers, effectively takes up the pictorial ways of the seventeenth century. The wood has large openings and cuts at the joints of the boards. The painting is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

Vase, Roman excavations, 1860

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Further signature, date and title on the back. On the frame there is a stamp from an important private collection. The work proposes a composition of an amphora and a painted ceramic plate, surrounded on the right by roses. Milanese painter and decorator, Luigi Scrosati initially attended the Brera Academy, which he soon abandoned to devote himself to numerous trips abroad, in particular to Paris. Already from the beginning of his activity, in the 1940s, he worked as a painter of still lifes strongly influenced by French examples, in particular from the Lyon school. Alongside the easel and watercolor production, dominated by the specialization of still life of flowers, Scrosati was very active as an interior decorator, often engaged in team work alongside architects and project managers, but always with considerable autonomy and a characteristic style , substantially eclectic and aimed at a reinterpretation of the styles of the past. The debut in this area, towards the end of 1842, consists of a cycle of frescoes in the residence of San Fiorano (LO) owned by Giorgio Guido Pallavicino Trivulzio, for which Scrosati decorated a Gothic room, a Rococo living room and a small entrance compartment. His frescoes can be found in numerous villas in and around Milan, works in which Scrosati refers to the styles of the past, re-proposing eighteenth-century suggestions, but also of the Baroque. The decorations in the Dante's Cabinet first and then in other rooms in the Palazzo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan (now home to the Museum of the same name) were instead of neo-medieval taste, made with the Bertini team of which Scorsati was part. The disease that struck Scrosati in the lower limbs in 1857, making him ill, probably prevented him from continuing his activity as a decorator, forcing him to fall back on floral easel painting, which led him to produce still lifes of flowers, but also portraits or fake bas-reliefs with garlands of flowers or even interiors and genre scenes, in which he was influenced by the German and Viennese production of the Biedermeier type and the French one of the Lyon school. In 1862 Scrosati was commissioned to direct a new Ornato course at the Brera Academy, with particular reference to flower painting and relations with industry, a course set up by the Braidense institution to expand the already flourishing school of ornamental painting. The work is presented in a style frame.

The group of three compositions, natural

Tempera on paper applied to canvas. The compositions depict different birds and butterflies flying above flowers. Good condition, small spots of moisture. Presented in coeval frames. 18th century.

Church interior

Oil painting on canvas. Signed on the back. Born into a wealthy Venetian family, Vittore Zanetti Zilla began to paint as a self-taught, drawing inspiration from Giacomo Favretto, a family friend, before moving on to the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Guglielmo Ciardi. In fact, on his model, he passes from genre scenes of his first period to landscape painting. Beginning to travel, initially in Italy, he comes very close to the Neapolitan school; from 1898 he began his long journeys abroad, which brought him closer to the most widespread European landscape instances, leading him to adopt a very modern pictorial language. He sets up his first personal exhibitions especially in the German and Austrian area, where he is successful; the foreign contamination also occurs in the choice of the pictorial technique, moving from watercolor to oil painting and finally to tempera, which will characterize him later. With the First World War Zanetti Zilla returned to Italy, first to Florence and then to Milan, but getting very close to the genre of the Venetian landscape and finally becoming passionate about still life. With the transition to the use of tempera, Zanetti Zilla refines that technique that will become his distinctive feature: through large and fat brushstrokes, he creates works that are intensely vivid in color and veiled with a porcelain sheen obtained thanks to the final oil varnish. The work presented proposes the interior of a church with figures in prayer. The pictorial technique already expresses that contamination from Northern European painting, placing it already in the period of the late 19th-early 20th century. The painting is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

Maria Dolente

Marble bas-relief. Engraved signature along the left margin. Born in Cannobbio (on Lake Maggiore), Giulio Branca was introduced to the art by the Cannobio sculptor Bergonzoli, and later attended G. Strazza's school of nude drawing and sculpture at the Brera Academy. Born in Cannobio on 13 December 1850 to Ludovico, he was introduced to art by the Cannobio sculptor Bergonzoli, and attended the school of the nude and G. Strazza's school of sculpture at the Brera Academy. He made about four hundred sculptures, including memorials, funerary monuments and portrait busts. Branca also took part, following a competition, in the completion of the high wall of the cathedral of Como, which had remained unfinished for centuries, sculpting several figures in white marble for the façade and the altar between 1897 and 1900. The work presented here is a bas-relief showing a half-bust of the grieving Madonna flanked by two pious women. It is presented in a coeval wooden frame from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Oil on canvas. It probably depicts a tragic anti-Semitic event. On the right, a wounded soldier in Russian uniform is witnessing the dramatic scene of a slaughtered family while the rabbi is preying for them. The broken window and the upside down drawers make clear that the killers broke into the house. On the left of the mirror, there is a Jewish writing that may suggest the location. The word may be translated as 'Ciro' and may be referring to the areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan near the Kura (river flowing from Turkey to the Caspian Sea, known as 'Ciro' in 1800s). The painting, restored and relined, is presented in a frame of the 1800s.

Oil on canvas. The painting celebrates the memory of a deceased person: it represents a tombstone with the name of the dead and the dates, laying on the bare ground in a desert landscape, faded with a sunset in the background, but surrounded by a garland of lively flowers. A white lily stands out from all, stretched out upwards, but with a broken stem, forcing the corolla to turn towards the ground: it is the "memento mori", the symbol of the transience of life. The beautiful painting is presented in a gilded coeval frame.