Baroque Style Mirror Gilded Wood Italy XX Century

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.

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.

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.

Libeccio

Oil on table. Signed lower right. On the back, further signature, title and cartouche of the Galleria Dedalo in Milan. Giulio Cesare Vinzio, an artist of Livornese origin, artistically trained in Florence, attending the studio of Giovanni Fattori. In the countryside around Florence he begins to paint landscapes from life, with oxen, peasants, horses as protagonists, landscapes of the Maremma, rendered with bright colors and strong chromatic contrasts. From the beginning of the twentieth century, while exhibiting throughout Italy and abroad, he moved to Piedmont and approached pointillist painting: while continuing to prefer rural landscapes and bucolic realities, he represented them in the atmospheres of twilight, nocturnal, dawns, no longer made with broad brushstrokes, but small strokes divided between them. In 1921 he joined the Labronico Group, which brought him closer to the realist naturalism of the origins. The work presented here offers a glimpse of a Maremma beach, beaten by the libeccio, the wind that blows from the south across the Mediterranean. The technique is that of realism, using large and superimposed brush strokes. In frame.

Orta Panorama

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower left. Further signature and title on the back. The pictorial production of this artist, originating from the hamlet of Castanedo, a hamlet of Domodossola climbing the Alps, is purely of a landscape type, and linked to his places of life. Often there are views and glimpses of the island of San Giulio d'Orta, clearly visible from the alpine slopes that overlook it. The painting is presented in a frame.

S. Lucia Flower Market

Oil on the table. Signed lower right. On the back the title in pencil. It is a lively and intense glimpse of the Pallonetto di S. Lucia, the well-known Neapolitan terraced alley which, together with those of San Liborio and Santa Chiara, constitutes the three Pallonetti of Naples; striking and peculiar the contrasts of lights and colors Oscar Ricciardi was a prolific Neapolitan painter considered by some to be the head of Neapolitan Impressionism; he painted as main subjects marine, beaches, glimpses, landscapes and Neapolitan customs and traditions of his city. In his works the intense chromatism, the study from life, the abandonment of drawing and the limpid and clear light that pervades the scenes, reveal the knowledge of Impressionism, due to the presence in Naples of Giuseppe De Nittis. The painting is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

Vase of Flowers 1956

Oil on plywood. Signed and dated lower left. The Piedmontese painter Emilio Vacchetti devoted himself mainly to flower arrangements in vases and landscapes, glimpses of the Piedmontese mountains. The work in warm and shaded colors is presented in a frame

'Le Piante as dan la Buna' 1962

Oil on cardboard. On the back there is a label with the name of the artist, the date and the title. Belonging to a family of Piedmontese painters, Sandro Vacchetti was an eclectic artist, who experimented not only in painting but also as an illustrator, set designer and above all as a ceramist. Sandro Vacchetti's pictorial production can easily be divided into two main thematic groups: that of portraits, whose stylistic language is similar to that used by the artist for his ceramic creations, and that of landscapes, which mostly portray places familiar to the teacher, linked to childhood memories: places of the soul, filtered through the emotions that make them even more intimate. The small landscape view proposed here belongs to this second group. In frame.