ANCIENT PAINTING
 

Oil on canvas. Lombard school of the late 17th-early 18th century. The rich composition offers a large bouquet of colorful flowers in an embossed vase, next to two large pumpkins and mixed fruit (grapes and peaches): with different intensities of color, the various naturalistic elements emerge from the completely dark background, creating effects of lights and shadows. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in an early 20th century frame.

Oil on canvas. Lombard school of the late 17th-early 18th century. The rich composition offers a large bouquet of colorful flowers in an embossed vase, next to a bowl full of porcini mushrooms and a bunch of grapes: with different intensities of color, the various naturalistic elements emerge from the completely dark background, creating effects of lights and shadows. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in an early 20th century frame.

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.

Feast day in the Village

Oil on canvas. On the back of the painting there are some labels: one from an English market (probably an auction from the early 1900s) bearing the title; a second from a Milanese gallery in via Montenapoleone (from the 1930s) and finally a label from an important private collection. The scene proposes a moment of celebration in a Nordic village: in the center of the street men and women dance and chat, while others sit at tables drinking and playing, children and animals chase each other around; the atmosphere is lively and cheerful. The pictorial style and the methods of execution are compatible with the production of David Teniers III (son of David Teniers II the Younger), a Flemish painter who in his production includes various scenes of festivity and village life. Restored and relined at the end of the 19th century, with a frame from the same period.

Oil on the table. Northern European school of the 17th century. The scene depicts an episode in the life of Scipio narrated by Tito Livio and Valerio Massimo. Publius Cornelius Scipio, later known as Scipio the African, in 209 BC. during the Spanish campaign, after the capture of Cartagena he received as a personal gift a beautiful virgin, who was in the group of hostages. But he, listening to the pleas of his family, respected her by sending her back to her parents and fiancé, with the only recommendation that her betrothed work for peace between Rome and Carthage. In the representation Scipio is in the center, seated on his throne, and turns to the left, to the suppliant parents of the girl, while with a merciful gesture, he indicates to them to take back his daughter, standing on the right, flanked by her boyfriend. All around, soldiers and followers of the king. The scene is full of figures, bright and colorful, and underlines the positivity of the king, a central and powerful character, but capable of meekness and clemency. The restored painting has been reinforced on the back with wooden strips. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Oil on canvas. In the beautiful composition you can see, resting on an inlaid wooden sideboard, a basket full of cherries, some of which are scattered on the top, and a plate full of red currants, mixed with leaves and a few cherry blossoms. A goldfinch rests on the handle of the basket; to frame the composition, on the right a large bouquet of multicolored flowers in a vase, on the left a red curtain. The bright colors of the fruits, the flowers and the curtain stand out, while the support cabinet blends into the dark background, as does the little bird, distinguishable from the dark background only by the white plumage on the wings and the red outline of the eyes. The work is part of the large 17th century Emilian production of this highly decorative type of subject. The painting, restored and relined, has a marked crack and drops of color along the edges.