GALLERY
 

Snowy Landscape with Figures 1872

Oil on canvas. Signed, dated 1872 and located in Parma in the lower right corner. It is a large winter landscape with a strong scenic impact, which fits well into the scenographic traditionalism of the painting of Mentore Silvani, a native artist of Traversetolo (Parma), a landscape painter but also known as a set designer. In the scene, sprinkled with the white of a short snowfall that creates that typical rarefied and silent winter atmosphere, between bare and dry trees, a dirt road winds its way through by a traveler; on the right a dilapidated building with a wash house where a woman draws water; in the center a small column on which a sacred image is mounted. Trained in his hometown, Silvani participated in the exhibitions of the Encouragement of Parma starting from 1864, and it is mainly in his city that his works are found today (at the Municipality of Parma, the National Gallery, the Paolo Toschi artistic high school ); however, he also exhibited in Milan (1872) and Florence (1875). Trained as a scenographer at the school of Gerolamo Magnani, Silvani held this position in Parma but also in Venice starting from 1871. His pictorial production, which includes mainly rural landscapes of the Parma countryside, is always characterized by fidelity to reality. The work proposed here is presented in a contemporary 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.

The denial of Peter

Oil on oak board, coming from an important historical Florentine collection. The collection started by an ancestor of the family who was in Vienna in 1798 and then in Wurzburg until 1813, as a companion of exile of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand III. The collection was transferred to Florence after the fall of Napoleon, and its importance is proved by a copy of an inventory compiled in 1881. At number 14 of it (corresponding to the one shown on the cartouche at the back of the table), the compiler's description:...a two feet and four and a half inches long wooden footboard, and one foot and eight and a half-inch high, representing Peter who denies Jesus Christ to the maiden in Anna's house. We see the Savior from far away carried to that pontiff to be examined, in the midst of a crowd and a quantity of soldiers. In the 1960s, an initial attribution to Bruegel was denied and relocated to Francken. The composition was obviously successful because other versions of the workshop were known (see for example, an oil on copper with identical subject and dimensions in the Koller auction on 18/09/2015). Presented in a refurbished 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.

Landscape with Architecture and Figures

Oil on canvas. The large landscape is dominated by an imposing architectural structure with columns overlooking the sea, which occupies the entire central part of the canvas, while a fortress is outlined on the right. The scene is then animated by numerous figures of commoners intent on daily activities: in the foreground on the left, on the quay, a group of men awaits the load of numerous crates and trunks. The monogram D.G. This abbreviation, together with the baroque stylistic modality, refers to the attribution to Domenico Gargiulo, stage name of the Neapolitan painter Micco Spadaro (1609/1612 - 1675). Active mainly in Naples, especially in the two decades between the mid-seventeenth century, the Gargiulo established itself mainly as a landscape painter and above all for having documented the tumultuous events of Naples in the seventeenth century (eruptions, epidemics, the revolt of Masaniello). The progressive specialization in the representation of landscapes or city scenes, crowded with figurines presented with minute descriptions and with attention to popular social reality, meant that his commission was mainly of a private nature, receiving commissions from numerous Neapolitan notables, regents, knights and finding his works in all the most important Neapolitan collections of the time. Among its major clients there was also the great Flemish collector Gaspare Roomer, to whom the Gargiulo owed its fortune. Gargiulo often inserted his abbreviations in his works, but rarely dated them; it was possible to establish the dating of his production only thanks to the realization of a series of works for the monks of the Certosa di S. Martino, which took place between 1638 and 1646, among the few religious works he made but the only ones in be documented with some accuracy. The large canvas proposed here is presented in a stylish frame.

"L'arc en ciel" XVII Century

Oil painting on canvas. Northern European school of the seventeenth century. The large pastoral scene presents a broad landscape that pushes the gaze to the distant sea coast; on it the sky is gradually opening up, revealing flashes of blue on the left, while on the right, among the darker clouds left over from the storm, a large rainbow is revealed. In the foreground, a group of shepherds and shepherdesses enjoy amorous games, discrete and festive, in the midst of their herds, which rest and drink from the nearby stream. The whole scene is animated by a dimension of joyful relaxation and refreshment, as if the rainbow had restored serenity to the environment, bringing light and with it serenity to the world. The attribution to Jordaens is linked both to the typology of subject, the pastoral one, a recurring theme in the production of the Flemish artist, and to the pictorial modalities: in this work we find his warm and luminous colours, the strong contrasts of light and shadow, the robust figures with red and healthy faces, sometimes with satyristic features, the compositions full of figures that give an air of sensual vitality. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period gilded frame.

Still life with holes, fruit, a parrot and quail

Oil painting on canvas. Neapolitan school of the seventeenth-eighteenth century. The large composition is rich in numerous different elements: in the center stands a large floral composition, of multiple varieties in bright colors; on the left of the flowers, resting on a Doric capital, there is a budgie with bright colors contrasting with the dull ones of the dead quail lying on the floor below, together with some pumpkins and a pewter vase. The painting, restored and relined, is presented in a period frame. It comes from an important collection (Commendatore Arturo Stucchi, an entrepreneur from Como, is mentioned on the back).

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.