Mirror Glass Italy XX Century - Italy 20th century

The Old Milan

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower right. On the back of the frame there is a label with the title. Self-taught Milanese artist, Giovan Francesco Gonzaga declared "my true teacher is Nature", and faithful to her, he dedicated himself mainly to scenes with horses (a passion inherited from his experience in the Savoy Cavalry during the war) to landscapes and still lifes , always depicted ";en plein air". Vittorio Sgarbi wrote about him: "The wisdom of Giovan Francesco Gonzaga lies in the drawing, which is strong and decisive..... The images vibrate with restlessness, in the sign of man's struggle against himself, in the hell of a a story that always seems to repeat the same drama. But if the preparatory drawing is admirable, this artist's color has a royalty and sensitivity that come from a musical perception of color, where the palette is expressed in sudden changes and rhythms buttons". In this work Gonzaga offers a glimpse of his Milan, where a ray of sunlight illuminates the facade of a building making it emerge from the shadows of the narrow street that branches off at the corner. The work is presented in a period frame.

Roman Landscape

Oil painting on canvas. signed lower left. Further signature and title on the back. Born and lived in Rome, Sdruscia was an interpreter of the so-called Roman School, mainly creating glimpses of his city, in a pictorial style that looks to the great masters of the period, such as Guidi and De Pisis. The work is presented in a frame.

Woman at the Spinning Wheel

Tempera on paper. Signed lower left. Probably a sketch, due to the rapid drafting and unfinished contours, this work presents a young woman sitting spinning at a spinning wheel. The artist Gino Simonetti, painter but also writer, born in the Piacenza area, lived and worked mainly in Turin. the work is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. Inside a rural kitchen, a peasant family allows themselves a moment of celebration: the father plays the mandolin, listened to by the little girl who seems to want to dance, assisted by her mother, and by the other women of the house, smiling as they carry out their domestic tasks. The production of the Neapolitan painter Giuseppe Giardiello always looked to the folklore of Neapolitan rural and peasant life, painting, with intimate and delicate tones, both scenes of domestic life and landscape views animated by figures. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Tempera on canvas. A group of girls performs a concert for instruments (a violin and a viola) and voices. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Initials and date bottom right. On the path in the middle of the countryside, a family of travelers with their mounts stop under the shelter of the branches of a tree. Under a gray sky, in the distance, the smoke of a fire rises in the middle of the fields, which another farmer observes. The work is presented in a period frame.

Landscape with River Glimpse 1906

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The Roman-born artist Cesare Maggi established himself as a pointillist landscape painter, portraying alpine landscapes in the Engadine and Aosta Valley, often enlivened by the inclusion of figures and animals. Becoming a friend of the painter Giacomo Grosso in Turin in 1901, he then successfully oriented himself towards the portrait genre, setting aside the pointillist technique. While still favoring high mountain views, he broadened his subjects by also engaging in seascapes and still lifes. In this work, still from the first period, Maggi portrays a glimpse of the countryside crossed by a calm river, bordered by rows of bare trees and small grassy hills, behind which the farmhouses overlook: already no longer linked to the techniques divisionist, the work is rather characterized by dense and opaque mixtures of color, in which the earth, the water and the farmhouses are superimposed in a continuum broken only by the band of sky above. The work is presented in a period frame.

Three figures

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. On the back there is a stamp of the historic Galleria Palmieri in Milan (now no longer existing). The work proposes the typical characters of Franz Borghese';s satirical painting: these are figures that recall, in gestures and clothes, the subjects of 1910, portrayed with almost caricatured, sarcastic features and poses. Borghese's production in fact, after an initial period characterized by a dark and deep, almost dramatic painting, from the 1700s turns into a painting of satire and sarcasm, accentuated by a bright chromatic palette, which aims in particular at the bourgeoisie of the turn of the century. The three figures in this work, two men and a lady, are depicted sideways as they walk in single file in their elegant street clothes: the serious expressions, the distant gazes, seem to underline mutual indifference, as well as the boredom and vacuity of their life, which contrast with the bright and lively colours. The work is presented in a frame.

The path of San Rocco (Camogli)

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower left. On the back this title in pencil. An extremely original landscape painter who experimented with oil painting but also with watercolors and engraving, Raul Viviani came very close to pointillist painting, however developing his own personal technique, characterized by very thin filaments of color in the shape of thin commas, which define the structures of his landscapes. With his transfer to Liguria, which made the landscape of that region the protagonist of his works, his technique changed, moving away from the original divisionism to open up to a broad and summary brushstroke, which finally resulted in the last period in a production of nature death with violent and contrasting colors. This landscape can also be placed in the Ligurian period, which offers a glimpse of a well-known Ligurian locality, still rendered in the characteristic style of Viviani, made of brushstrokes in thin filaments, superimposed on spots of lively color, in the chromatic ranges of the colors of nature. In frame.

Still life

Oil on the table. Signed upper right. An extremely original landscape painter who experimented with oil painting but also with watercolors and engraving, Raul Viviani came very close to pointillist painting, however developing his own personal technique, characterized by very thin filaments of color in the shape of thin commas, which define the structures of his landscapes. With his transfer to Liguria, which made the landscape of that region the protagonist of his works, his technique changed, moving away from the original divisionism to open up to a broad and summary brushstroke, which finally resulted in the last period in a production of nature death with violent and contrasting colors. This still life, a composition of vegetables and a vividly colored bottle, can be placed in this period. The work is presented in a frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner and on the back (Verschafeldt). Light losses of color. In coeval frame with missing parts. Early 20th century.

Poppies in Vase 1948

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Composition of poppies in vase, with ceramic Madonnina on the rear wall. Noel Quintavalle (known under the pseudonym Noelqui), a native of Ferrara but raised and artistically trained in Milan, was a multifaceted artist. Graduated in architecture, he was self-taught in the arts, but after the great war in which he actively participated, he quickly distinguished himself and exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions; in the meantime he also carried out literary activities by publishing various volumes (satire, fairy tales, short memories of the war) and also experimented with sculpture and xylography. His pictorial production, which began as a pointillist, was then influenced by the synthesis of modern painting. The subjects most dear to him were the portrait (with a preference for particular female figures, such as dancers) and the landscape. His production of floral subjects dates back to the 1940s, linked to the period in which he recovered the need for interiority, approaching the aesthetic concepts of the art of the "twentieth century". The work is presented in a contemporary frame.