Architecture Glimpse V. Codazzi Attr. Oil on Canvas Italy XVII Century

Winter Landscape with Figures on Ice

Oil painting on canvas. Flemish school of the XVII-XVIII century. On the frame there is a label attributing to Thomas Heeremans (but with incorrect date). The large scene offers a winter landscape appropriate to the Dutch territory, as it is characterized by a frozen canal, near a village, populated by numerous figures of skaters, intent on daily activities: the horse-drawn sleigh for transporting people, the the man who pushes the "wheelbarrow" full of wood, the child who pushes himself into his little box; other figures pass by on the embankment along the canal. The gray and cold sky of a winter day hangs over everything. The subject was the recurring one in the production of the Dutch painter Thomas Heeremans, who mainly painted winter landscapes of his land, replicating them several times due to the success obtained, and inducing numerous other artists to imitate him; it is therefore thought that this work can be traced back to an imitator of the Heeremans, rather than to him directly. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Lombard area of the late 18th century. The four canvases show scenes from Orlando Furioso, the famous epic poem written by Ludovico Ariosto and published for the first time in 1516. On the frame, on the back, there are handwritten writings in ancient Italian, which say the title of the scene and they give the reference of the song and the verse. All four scenes represent episodes taken from the first two songs of the poem and appear to be sequential. The attributive titles are as follows: 1- “This painting represents that Paladin galiardo (Rinaldo) son of Amone sig. di Monte Albano, which describes Ariosto in canto 1 to verse 12 ”: depicts the moment in which Rinaldo, on foot of his horse Baiardo, sees Angelica escaped from the camp of Namo di Baviera in the wood. 2- "This painting represents Angelica and Ferraù when she comes to their aid, which Ariosto describes in canto 1 verse 14": Angelica fleeing from Rinaldo, meets in the woods Ferraù, a noble Saracen knight who is also in love with the girl, who helps to escape by opposing the Christian knight. 3- “This painting represents Rinaldo and Sacripante who fall down, Angelica runs away from their fury. Ariosto describes it in Canto 2 verse 10 ": Rinaldo and Sacripante fight to compete for the love of Angelica, who in the meantime runs away. 4- “This painting represents Rinaldo and Sacripante in the act they fell for Angelica and were stopped by a spirit in the form of a Valletto. Ariosto describes it in canto 2 verse 15 ": while the two knights fight, Angelica meets a hermit, who, with a spell, evokes a spirit with the appearance of a footman, who interrupts the duel between the two contenders. The paintings therefore belong to a single pictorial cycle, attributable to the end of the eighteenth century and which, in accordance with the neoclassical taste, represents the characters in classical clothes - warriors dressed as ancient soldiers, Angelica dressed in a Roman tunic, shoes and bracelet - , but inserted in a landscape of Northern Italy, a shady and dense forest. The Orlando Furioso had the peculiarity of proposing the warlike theme associated with the love one (in particular the love story between Angelica and Medoro was preferred, which became the subject of numerous works by artists of all centuries) and obtained great popularity and success: His representations were numerous in all ranges of visual pictorial art, in stately frescoes, paintings, ceramics, even apothecary jars, cups, medals, pendulums, candelabra. It began in the Emilian land, the homeland of the poem created by Ariosto for Cardinal Ludovico D'Este, to arrive at the Medici courts, in Lombardy, where subsequently Ariosto's pictorial cycles were carried out in numerous palaces and stately homes. The canvases are presented in gilded style frames.

Oil on canvas. As signed by the label on the back, the painting was presented athe "Venetian Baroque Painting Exhibition" of 1943, with the title "in porto al tramonto" and the attribution to Marco Ricci. This attribution can be motivated by the executive ability, which through rapid and loose brushstrokes. It manages to fully render the natural reality of the stormy sea with sensivity. In this regard, see the similar images published by Rodolfo Pallucchini in the studies "Studi ricceschi: contributo a Marco published in the magazine Arte veneta (vol. IX, 1955). Ricci's landscape and marine productions (which, however, were not his most extensive production) are characterized by powerful and emotional lights, by dry and twisted trees, rocks and towers, cumulus clouds that suddenly break open in vague flashes of blue, foaming waves, a complex repertoire that transfigures nature into a dramatic and restless representation, in which man is also inserted as an integral element. Also in this painting we find these highly dramatic but at the same time scenographic elements, with some human figures, three men on a small boat in the foreground, who are barely distinguishable from the sea and the rocks that surround them, as well as the ship on the left sinking engulfed by the sea. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

Love and Psyche

Oil painting on canvas. Northern Italian school of the 17th century. The scene refers, with some variations but very close in size, to a part of the large fresco entitled "Banchetto degli dei" in the Chamber of Cupid (or Chamber of Cupid and Psyche) of Palazzo Té in Mantua, a large representation of over nine meters made by Giulio Romano with his workshop in the 16th century. The proposed scene (which in Mantua is located to the right of the great banquet) sees Cupid and Psyche lying on a triclinium, while a small winged figure crowns them with laurel and two nymphs wash Cupid's hand; in the background on the right a group of satyrs is sacrificing a goat to the altar of a deity, while in the centre, in the distance, a city is burning. The banquet of the gods is the final moment of the myth of the two lovers who, after many trials and vicissitudes, obtain Venus' permission to get married. The work, restored and relined, is presented in an antique frame.

Deer hunting

Oil on canvas. The painting is set in the woods near some architectural ruins and the focus is on the lively group of hunters dressed like knights and armed with swords and lances. They are delivering the final blow to the already wounded and dying deer with the help of dogs. The large format highlights the important commissioner. Restored and relined, it is presented in revival frame. 18th century.

Oil on canvas. Lombard school. The rich lady portrayed is accompanied by the identifying inscription at the top right which reads "Eleonora Lampuniana Nupta N.V. Bartolomei De Cornu 1478": it is therefore Eleonora Lampugnani wife of Bartolomeo Del Corno. The Lampugnani family is an ancient patrician family of Milan (the name derives from the Lampugnano neighbourhood), with residences in Legnano and Busto Arsizio, and to which Filippo Maria Visconti (Duke of Milan) assigned the fief of Trecate in the fifteenth century; the noblewoman's husband belonged to the noble Piedmontese Corno family (originally called Del Corno). The noblewoman is portrayed standing, in a splendid richly embroidered dress, embellished with lace; she lays her hand on a precious box inlaid with ivory, probably a coin cabinet, a symbol of wealth and power, surmounted by a vase with flowers, a symbol of vanity. The painting has an ancient restoration on the hands, which are of lower quality than the face, the clothes, the glass jar. The painting comes from an antique Lombard collection. The date 1478, reported in the inscription, is not very consistent with the sixteenth-century clothing: according to the story of the family of origin of the painting, the date that appeared before the last restoration was 1578, and therefore it would be a modification mistakenly made by the restorer.

Oil on canvas. North-European School. This is a funny allegorical scene of profane love, that wants to prove how everyone, of any social class and every age, can fall into the trap of falling in love. The background of the canvas is occupied by an enormous keepnet, the basket net used in some kinds of fishing, above its opening sits a putto playing the violin; the keepnet is crowded with couples, while a parade of other couples walks in front of them to reach the entrance. Between them, there are couples of old and young people, rich and poor people, nobles, bourgeois and proletarians. Everyone has a content and light expression, they share looks of love or they benevolently look at the happiness of the others. Inside the keepnet, there is even a couple of royals, that correspond, for their features and clothing, to the Elector Palatine of Rhineland, John William of the Palatinate-Neuburg and his second wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. On the back of the painting, there is a label bearing a historical attribution to Jan Frans Douven (1656-1727), the Dutch artist who moved to Düsseldorf in 1682 as the official painter at the Court of the Elector Palatine of Rhineland, mostly representing scenes of the daily life of the prince and his second wife. The label would confirm the scope of the attribution to an artist of the 17th-18th century in Northern Europe. The painting comes from a historical collection in Milan. It shows some traces of restorations and a patch. Frame in style.

Oil on canvas. Lombard School. It is the portrait of a man in armour standing proud, almost in motion, his hand sitting on the hilt of his sword; there is a coat of arms top left, a painted title block bottom right with a long Latin inscription, that identifies the man. He is Bartolomeo III Olevano, who belongs to the powerful noble family of the Olevano, feudal lords of many towns in the Pavia and Lomellina areas (where their castle still exists), who was very involved in the history of Pavia and its countryside until the 18th century. Bartolomeo III, born in 1512, had dedicated himself to the art of war for 40 years, carrying out numerous and highly honoured deeds, and was prefect of Mortara and Novara during the domination of Charles V, leader of soldiers and ambassador of Philip II. His most important achievements are summarised in the title block: a translation of the text is available. The coat of arms of the family has an olive tree on the left, from which the family took its name. The painting comes from an important historical Lombard family collection.

Jesus In Front Of Caiaphas

Oil on canvas. The painting reprises the piece of the Dutch master Gerrit Van Honthorst, realized in 1617 and now preserved in the National Gallery in London. Dutch by birth, he came to Rome soon after the death of Caravaggio, from whom he assimilated the style that earned him the nickname "Gherardo delle Notti". While in Rome, the artist was hosted by the Giustiniani family, who commissioned him a piece for his private collection, where it stayed until 1804. Brought to Paris first, in the Bonaparte collection, after more changes of ownership, it finally got to London in 1922. The painting tells the dramatic episode of the encounter between High Priest Caiaphas and Jesus, during his Passion. The whole upper part is occupied by the dark: the emptiness, the void, they focus the attention on the two protagonists and on the tragedy that is happening. The scene is strongly static, almost frozen in a specific moment, the accusatory act of the Priest towards Christ, to highlight the intensity of the inner drama, profoundly painful. In the scenem Caiaphas is on the left, sitting at the table on which the book of Jewish Law is sitting, and holds his finger up in an accusatory tone; Jesus is on the right, standing with his hands tied, in a humble attitude. There is a candle in the middle, the only source of light, that connects the face of Caiaphas and Jesus', that meet in a game of glances along a diagonal line, and of which the artificial light undelines mercilessly the expressive contrast, the priest's grotesque and angry, while Christ's is bright and composed. On the background, behind the two protagonists, there are figures of High Priests. They are just shadows in the dark who are waiting on the judgement and their faces are shrouded in the darkness that increases the tension. The mark of Caravaggio's influence is easy to spot in the contrast between lights and dark and the intensity of their gazes. The canvas here proposed, half the size of the original but faithful in the stylistic and interpretive forms, was probably commissioned in a smaller size by someone who appreciated the original in Palazzo Giustiniani. Restored and recanvased in 19th century. There are some names written on the back, signs of ownership. Frame in style.

Oil on canvas. Emilian school. The large painting comes from the mixture of a piece by Guido Reni (1575-1642), "Virgin Mary at the sewing school", now lost, but known for studio copies and engravings, and another version, left unfinished by Reni himself and then completed by Gianandrea Sirani (1610-1670), and is now presented in the Hermitage Museum in Petersburg. The art historian Massimo Pulini has written about this second version and the finishing work by Sirani, in the article "Gianandrea Sirani painter of recitatives and finisher of unfinished pieces by Reni". The piece presented here refers to the version of Sirani in the composition that takes up the whole scene with female figures participating in the school, to which the little dog is added, however moved from left to right, while the presence of the girl accompanied by her mother on the right refers to the version of Reni. Moreover, an absolutely new element appears in this piece, which makes this canvas an additional version: the presence of a landscape opening in the background in the centre, framed between the two heavy curtains. The piece has been restored and relined. It is presented in an 18th century frame, regilded and adapted.

Erminia among the Shepherds

Oil on canvas. The large canvas recounts an episode taken from the Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso, in which the young Erminia, princess of Antioch secretly in love with Tancredi, witnesses the wounding of her beloved in a duel. Driven by love, she therefore wears the weapons of the warrior Clorinda, her close friend, and at night she goes out to reach her beloved Tancredi and heal him. But in the Christian camp a ray of moonlight illuminates her and, mistaken for Clorinda by the sentries, she is forced to make a hasty flight: this is how it happens in a village inhabited by shepherds who live far from the war in an idyllic space, where she asks and obtains to be hosted for some time in the (vain) hope of forgetting her unhappy love. The work, already attributed to Carlo Loth, is rather referable to the production of Louis Dorigny, the Parisian painter who lived for a long time in Italy, in Rome, in Venice and finally definitively in Verona, where he obtained numerous orders from Veronese but also from clients. Venetians and Lombards, extending his activity as a fresco painter from Bergamo to Udine. In Verona since the beginning of the century, the preferences in the field of painting went towards a complex classicistic language in the composition, but calm and elegant, even in the great decorative works. Dorigny conforms to this painting, who in this canvas combines the balanced classicism of Simon Vouet (of whom he was grandson) with the chiaroscuro he learned in Rome and the calm Venetian elegance. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in an early 20th century frame.

Oil on canvas. Neapolitan school of the eighteenth century. The scene, located near the sea, is dominated by a large complex of architectural ruins, with statues, arches, hanging gardens, and animated by numerous figurines of commoners intent on various activities. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in an antique frame.