Ancient Paitnting Portrait of an Habsburgh Monarch Oil on Canvas '700

Oil on canvas. The landscape shows a very green countryside, crossed centrally by a watercourse on whose bank, in the foreground, a herd of cattle is watering; in the centre, on the opposite bank, a farmhouse surrounded by greenery, and in the background, blue-coloured peaks under a sky with pink clouds. As is recurrent in 18th century landscape painting, one finds here a bucolic atmosphere of serenity and peace, generated by nature. The painting, restored and retouched, is presented in a lath frame.

Oil on canvas. Italian school of the 18th century. The left field of the scene is occupied by a large ruined architectural structure, a vestige of the past. On the right, with blue mountains in the background, overlooking a town, a wide river flows through the wooded countryside, crossed by a small bridge over which two figures of travellers pass. The painting is part of the broad production that was widely in vogue, especially between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, which took the name of Architectural Capriccio, a genre defined as the art of composing the landscape through the free combination of real or fantastic architectural elements, reworked ruins of antiquity, figures and macchiettas, according to a variety of declinations ranging from the grotesque to the visionary, from the picturesque to the elegiac. Restored and reworked, the painting is presented in a stylish frame.

Oil on canvas. Northern Italian School of the 18th century. The broad landscape shows in the centre a herdsman who has just passed with his cattle over the small bridge over the stream, which flows through the wooded countryside; in the background, again in the centre, a farmhouse and several country buildings. Restored and retouched, the painting is presented in a stylish frame.

Paper engravings. Five are from drawings by Giuseppe Zocchi (1711-1767) and the other five are from drawings by Jacopo Amigoni (1682-1752). They all depict episodes from the Old Testament, with different characters and episodes. Of Zocchi there are scenes from the life of Tobias, of Jephthah, of Moses (the burning bush), of Hagar and of Lot. Of Amigoni, scenes from the life of Jacob, of David with Abigail, of Abraham and two others of Moses (Moses saved from the waters and Moses defending the daughters of Jerus at the well). The German Joseph Wagner trained as a painter in Venice, in the workshop of the Rococo painter Jacopo Amigoni, who invited him to devote himself to copper burin engraving. In 1739 he founded the Wagnerian chalcography in Venice, which quickly became the most important print production center of the Serenissima; his workshop was very popular with many Venetian etchers (Volpato, Brustolon, Piranesi to name a few). In the prolific workshop, the most talented engravers active at the time were employed in the creation of hundreds of prints reproducing all kinds of the variegated eighteenth-century lagoon figurative culture, creating works of a high quality level, in which they immediately played a leading role the prints taken from prototypes of Amigoni, The revived scenes are of Rococo taste, set in landscapes dominated by a gentle nature and embellished by the presence of ancient ruins, and inserted in graceful rocaille frames. The engravings show slight gore of humidity. They are presented in contemporary gilded frames, with period glasses.

Gallant Scene and Bucolic Scene

Matching paintings on leather representing a gallant scene and a bucolic scene. Styled frames.

Les Gueux, 1622 (complete series)

Etchings. This is the complete series of 25 engravings on paper of the "Beggars" (Les Gueux), made by the French engraver in Nancy, and widely reproduced for the popularity it obtained; Rembrandt, who owned a collection of Callot's prints, was inspired by them for his beggar figures. Beggars or commoners of Italian origin are depicted (Callot drew them in Italy) who symbolize the poverty and the wounds of the human condition. The engravings have not been signed by the author, but have been numbered; only the first engraving, which portrays a very humble character carrying a flag with the words "Captain De Baroni", and which also represents the title page of the collection, shows the name of the painter and engraver. The whole series is presented in frames in style.

Oil painting on canvas. Central European school of the eighteenth century. Under a blue sky, a large, rather barren landscape is depicted, with the edge of a wood opening onto a rocky valley, with a river flowing between the rocks and snow-capped peaks in the background; in the foreground, scattered, some figures of shepherds with their flocks. On the stretcher at the back of the work, a cartouche refers to Poussin, the artist representing seventeenth-century classicism whose pictorial methods inspired the author of the painting. The painting, relined, is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Venetian school of the seventeenth century. The scene is full of figures and movement, and tells an episode of sacred history in a domestic guise. The little Maria, newborn, is in the center in the arms of the maids who are about to wash her, while her father Gioacchino looks at her with devotion; on the right a maid warms clothes by the fire in the fireplace, while on the top left other maidservants take care of the puerpera Sant'Anna. The scene is placed in a very large room, furnished with drapery, and which receives light from the small window at the top right. The work, created with good pictorial skills, is probably a preparatory sketch for a large canvas. The canvas has traces of restoration and relining. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Oil on canvas. Lombard school of the eighteenth century. An almost garland-like composition of variegated flowers, which occupy the entire pictorial field, against a dark background from which they emerge by themselves, without any other furnishing element. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a frame in the early 1900s style.

Oil on canvas. The two paintings, certainly similar in terms of subject type and pictorial methods, offer two landscape glimpses typical of the 17th and 18th Nordic production. They feature large countryside spaces near watercourses and inhabited by farmhouses. There are figures of peasants and commoners focusing on their work. The blue mountains in the background, preceded by gentle hills and surrmounted by a blue sky with white clouds. They had been previously relined and restored and they both show color spots and opacity. They feature a contemporary frame.

A Sacrifice to Venus

Watercolor on paper. At the bottom left the name Giuseppe Cades, Although on the back, in addition to the attribution, the title "The oath of the Vestal Virgin". A girl is offering garlands of flowers to the statue of the goddess Venus, traditionally painted in a discrete way. She's holding the veil with one hand to cover the loins. The other hand covers the breast and the head with the hair gathered and adorned with flowers. Behind the girl, a young woman watches the scene, while a third peers from behind the column of the temple: therefore it seems to be a scene of supplication to the goddess, asking her to favor the love of two young men: according to both Greek and Roman tradition, the young before the wedding woman devoted themselves to this goddess, which was considered as the protector of marriage and conjugal fidelity. The work seems to be very close to the production of Giuseppe Cades, who in the 1780s and 1790s became one of the best known and appreciated personality in the Roman artistic world. He was a draftsman and an engraver too. The work is framed

Sant'Antonio Abate e San Paolo l'Eremita

Oil on canvas. It is a large Nordic landscape, dominated by rocky peaks on the left and a lake with a central island on the right; in the foreground some figures that tell the legend of San Paolo Eremita, on the left, and Sant'Antonio abate, on the right with a centaur. The Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine tells that Saint Anthony the Abbot visited Paul the hermit, who for forty years had lived in solitude fed by a crow who brought him bread every day. Sant'Antonio asked for news from a centaur, who also in this scene shows him the way to follow with his arm. The restored and relined work is presented in a period frame.