Antique Painting Gallant Scene French School XVIII Century - French school. Mid 18th century

Flemish School, XVI Century

Oil on wooden board. Flemish school of the 16th century. The work has a plaque at the base attributing it to Lambert Van Noort (1520 -1571), justified by the closeness to his pictorial methods which can be found in the faces of Jesus and Magdalene, but not confirmable for the other parts of the painting. The work recounts the episode from the Gospel of John in which the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman accused of adultery to Jesus, to test her observance of the law of Moses, which included stoning. But Jesus, bending down to the ground, began to write with his finger in the dust, then when urged, he pronounced the words "Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone", saving the woman and subsequently forgiving her. The large stage is filled with a large and tight group of characters. Jesus in the centre, is the only figure bent on the ground, estranged from the rest of the group and fixed in his gesture of writing with one finger; standing behind him, with a precise vertical alignment of her face with that of Christ, is the accused woman, who covers her body with her cloak observing Jesus' gesture, while awaiting the sentence; all around the scribes, the Pharisees, some soldiers, who instead speak animatedly among themselves, are agitated, confronting each other, indicating what Jesus is doing. The subject was widely represented in Flemish painting, with different interpretative methods. If in this painting the Flemish school is clearly perceived in the faces with hard features and in the rather rigid bodies in the movements of the scribes and Pharisees, as well as in the representation of the building in the background and in the meticulous representation of the shoes in the right foreground, the two The figures of Jesus and the woman are instead affected by the Italian influence, which softened the features of the faces, gave the movements of the body greater composure and gracefulness, and with the help of a brighter color made them stand out among the other figures. The panel of the painting was subjected to restoration and relined in the first half of the 20th century. The painting is presented in an adapted antique frame.

Oil on wooden board. Central Italian school of the second half of the 16th century. The sacred scene of the Annunciation sees the two protagonist figures placed in the foreground in an interior that corresponds to Mary's room. The young woman is sitting in front of a small wooden desk, supported by figures of angels, on which rests the prayer book and a vase with small flowers; at her feet, the sewing basket. Mary's body is partially turned backwards, in a twisted movement, almost as if she were trying to escape, as if she wanted to get away from the other figure, that of the Archangel Gabriel. He stands on the right, majestic and elegant, with one hand holding a lily and the other pointing upwards above him, where the white dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, is emerging from a gap of light. In the background, tall columns with drapes surmount the platform on which Mary's bed rests. The composition refers, in the figurative style and in the chromatic choices, to the already mannerist painting of the schools of central Italy: in particular there is a strong concordance of style and composition with some works of the same subject by the painter Bastiano Vini Detto Bastiano Veronese (1525-1530 / 1602), who lived and worked in Pistoia from around 1540. It is in this city that some of his Annunciations are found: in particular the one in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (an altarpiece measuring over two meters in height), shows clear similarities on a formal and compositional level with the one presented here . There is concordance in the setting of the sacred scene: a room, in the background of which is a curtain that partially covers a bed, furnished with the elements essential to the narrative, the lectern and the chair richly decorated with caryatids of cherubs or angels that seem to be carved in the wood. The compositional scheme corresponds, albeit with slight variations, with the two figures arranged "frieze-like" on the same laying plane, and the somatic features of the Virgin and the Archangel also correspond. However, the floor differs, which, while it is homogeneous in our table, in the Pistoia one presents itself with alternating checkerboard colors, but it seems that this design of the floor was added in a later period, on the occasion of the reconstruction of the altar in 1637 -1639, in pendant with that of another work by the same Sebastiano Vini in the same church, a Sacred Conversation. It therefore seems rather certain that our panel was painted looking at the work of Bastiano Veronese, probably at the specific request of the client, and before the change in the floor, therefore dating back to the second half of the 16th century. The painting has undergone restoration, with the application of two reinforcements to the back of the panel. It is presented in a late 19th century setting. (Reference for the Pistoia altarpiece: Catalog of cultural heritage https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900035285)

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.