Antique Bronze Dancer Francesco Messina Posthumous Copy '900 - Italy, XX-XXI Century

Three Drinkers and an Angel 1942

Mixed media on board. Signed lower right. On the back further signature, title and date. Beppe Porcheddu, an important Italian illustrator and ceramist, was also a painter. In his evolutionary artistic path "it would seem that the artist has poured "the illustrator" into the painter and vice versa "the painter has prevailed in the illustration". From his first production, alongside his aptitude for the grotesque, Porcheddu showed a natural inclination for what was defined as a "perfect trio of symbols of a world (the medieval one) that expressed itself through metaphors like no other previous civilization" . In this panel, that tendency towards the grotesque is well expressed in the figures of the three drinkers, presented with crude features, clear lines and marked angles, while the figure of the angel appears evanescent, blurred, framed in the single light that comes from the open door.

Oil painting on canvas. Unsigned, there is a label on the back with attribution to Ferdinand II Wagner (1847 -1927), a German painter appreciated for his decorative painting. The large painting offers, according to an ancient taste, a glimpse of a city market in a Nordic village, with figures in 17th century Flemish clothes. The central part is occupied by a stall full of fruit and vegetables: on the left the seller, sitting with the steelyard hanging above her, is bargaining with the couple of buyers on the right, intent on testing the quality of the products. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Man's Face

Mixed media on cardboard. Signed lower right. On the back there is a cartouche with the title. An original exponent of European Expressionism, Lorenzo Viani was always attracted to the poorest and most derelict, both in his childhood and in his maturity, going so far as to transfer their lives and their human experiences onto the canvas. There are numerous faces of these characters who are rendered with strong chromatic impressions and with a decisive and fast brushstroke, an intense, expressive and at times extremely melancholic painting. The work is presented in a frame.

Watercolor on paper. Signature L. Rossi at the bottom left. It is a quick portrait, in pencil and then watercoloured, of two young ladies in winter walking clothes, shot in almost full length. The drawing is presented in a gilded and carved frame from the late 19th century, which has several defects.

Watercolor on paper. Signature L. Rossi at the bottom left. They are two young ladies in winter walking clothes, shot in almost full length. The drawing is presented in a gilded and carved frame from the late 19th century, which has several defects and traces of previous restoration

Landscape with Figure

Oil on the table. Signed lower right. The Neapolitan artist painted landscapes and glimpses of Neapolitan popular life, with a lively and immediate naturalism, in which brightness and a sense of color stand out. Here he shows the exterior of a house in the Neapolitan hinterland, where a female figure sits observing the chickens scratching in front of the henhouse. In frame.

Oil painting on canvas. The large landscape presents a view of a mountain lake, on the shore of which there are some huts; coniferous forests form the backdrop, creating the chromatic contrast between the blue of the sky and that of the water. The painting has a small tear in the canvas in the center. It is in a style frame.

Fire in the Countryside, 1907

Watercolor on paper. At the bottom right is the signature, date and location Rome. The Roman artist, son of an English painter, was above all a landscape painter of the Roman countryside, who painted mainly in watercolour. The work is presented in a contemporary wooden frame, with festoon decorations.

Oil on Hardboard. On the reverse there is an inscription in pencil with the date "29 June 1931" and the signature Amos Campaioli. The large country landscape, with leafy trees and a pond, sees in the foreground a lady on horseback flanked by a man with his dogs. The painting is presented in a wooden frame, covered on the front with gilded stucco.

Gilded bronze bas-reliefs. Signed lower right; number of specimen 25/150 bottom left. The triptych is accompanied by a certification of authenticity from the Seledi Arte Center in Milan. The titles of the three bas-reliefs are shown in the authentication: Fortune, Stallion Fight, The Couple. Francesco Messina's sculpture, so full of echoes of the classical Greco-Roman and Hellenistic heritage,"is characterized", wrote Carlo Carrà, "a simple and great style" and by an "idealistic and classical procedure"capable of give life to forms that remain as "ideal images". The three bronze panels are mounted in a single frame.

Vecchia Ciociara 1910

Pastels on paper. Signed and dated lower right. On the back there is a cartouche with the title and label of the Bolzani Art Gallery in Milan. Antonio Mancini was a realist painter, trained at the Neapolitan school of Morelli and Palizzi and later in Paris. He mainly dedicated himself to portraiture and genre scenes of popular or anecdotal taste, but while in an initial period he was close to nineteenth-century naturalism which led him to portray popular figures permeated with sadness (his street urchins), in a subsequent period he began to experiment different techniques, resorting to vivid flashes of light, placed on the canvas in lumps of violent color and bright flows, even reaching the use of extra-pictorial materials, such as colored glass, and proposing agitated figures, sometimes in imaginative disguises, an expression of his forte mental distress. This drawing, which belongs to the later production, presents the face of an elderly woman, (Ciociara by title), depicted in profile and surrounded by splashes of color that create a nuanced and lively halo. The work is presented in a contemporary frame (with small defects).

Amarici (Etiopian Figures) 1930s

Pencil on paper. Signature, title and location lower right. In the second half of the 1930s, Contardo Barbieri left as a volunteer for the campaign in East Africa. From this period there are some works that propose oriental subjects, such as these characters of the Ethiopian people called Amharic because they were natives of Amhara, a region of central-northern Ethiopia where the city of Dessié is located. In frame.