Swatch Square Subz100 Christmas Special Vintage Box 2000 - Switzerland, 2002

Oil on canvas. Italian school of the 18th century. The elegant gentleman is portrayed with some volumes placed on the surface in front of him, on the spines of which the authors can be read; the name of Paolo Valcarenghi, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Pavia in the 18th century, stands out in particular. The man portrayed therefore wants to underline his belonging to the world of Medicine. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a frame reconstructed with ancient elements and equipped on the upper side with a working lighting headlight from the mid-1900s.

Oil on canvas. Portrait of a nobleman flaunting the important honor of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a chivalric order established in Bruges in 1431 by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, with the task of spreading the Catholic religion, and later passed to the House of Habsburg and subsequently also to the Bourbons of Spain; it is considered the highest and most important order of chivalry. The painting, relined, is presented in an 18th-century frame, which requires restoration.

Medallions printed on copper plates. The eight medallions are from the series of medals of "Illustrious Italian Men". These eight in particular depict the profiles of eight illustrious men from the world of art and science: Antonio Allegri known as Correggio, Andrea Appiani, Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea Palladio, Scipione Maffei, Galileo Galilei, Francesco Guicciardini and Girolamo Vida. They are mounted on a cardboard panel covered in velvet and framed in a period frame.

Portrait of Lord Wood of Inchyra

Oil on canvas. On the back there is a cartouche with attribution and title of the work. Sir John Watson Gordon established himself as a portraitist, creating portraits of many illustrious English people in his life, and also becoming a court painter. The nobleman portrayed here belongs to the House of Wood of Inchyra, a town in Perthshire in Scotland. The painting is presented in a frame.

Oil on canvas. Nordic landscape, with green hilly countryside and rich in leafy vegetation, and with a rich watercourse on whose bank stands a small village; two figures of wayfarers pass on the path in the foreground. In the first canvas, the painting requires restoration for paint loss, and cleaning. It is presented in a contemporary frame.

Scenes of Court Life

The four engravings are taken from the frescoes painted by Nicolò dell'Abate for the Concert Hall of Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. The scenes were later included in the volume "The paintings of Pellegrino Tibaldi and Niccolò Abbati existing in the Institute of Bologna described and illustrated by Giampietro Zanotti Secretary of the Clementina Academy", Venice 1756. They depict four convivial moments of court life and precisely (from left to right): - The game of tarot cards - The banquet - Concert with a singer accompanied by a harp, lute and wind instrument - Concert of viola da gamba, lute and spinet players. The engravings bear the name of the painter at the bottom left, and the name of the engraver Bartolomeo Crivellari at the right, author of numerous engravings by Bolognese masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The engravings, which require restoration, are inserted in a single wooden frame from the late nineteenth century.

Oil on canvas. The portrait derives from the half-length one painted in 1725 ca. by Ilario Spolverini (1657 -1734) and preserved at La Rocca Sanvitale in Fontanellato. Antonio Farnese (1679 -1731) was the eighth Duke of Parma and Piacenza, as well as the last of the Farnese, who had poor political and administrative skills and was unable to take care of the administration of the state and to remedy its enormous financial deficit; his subjects were burdened by blood-sucking taxes, while the court continued to get into debt with the Genoese bankers. The painting requires restoration due to paint loss and two small holes at the bottom. It is presented in a contemporary frame.

Oil on canvas. Nordic landscape with countryside full of leafy plants, crossed by flowing watercourses and rocky mountains in the background. Two wayfarers on horseback are passing on the path on the left. On the first canvas, the painting requires restoration due to the presence of a slight tear in the lower right, several paint losses and the need for cleaning. It is presented in a contemporary frame.

Oil on canvas. The painting is signed Ferruccio Pellizzari, an artist not particularly well-known but already active in the 1920s (as attested by various catalogues of art exhibitions held in those years). The work effectively portrays the young woman, using broad and shaded brush strokes, with barely sketched contours. In a contemporary frame.

Oil on canvas. Flemish school of the 17th century. On the back there is a collector's cartouche. In a hilly landscape of rocks and clumps of trees, overlooking a small village on the left, a stream flows to form a foaming waterfall; on the banks some figures of peasants in transit or in conversation; on the right stands out the bird with the long tail, perched on a dry shrub. In the background, the hills fade into the sky full of clouds. The painting is presented in a regilded frame from the late 19th century.

Oil on canvas. Unidentified signature on the lower right (Terzaghi?). The scene depicts Christopher Columbus arriving at the Convento de la Rabida in Andalusia accompanied by his son Diego. The navigator was welcomed in this Franciscan convent in 1490, after receiving the news that the Catholic Monarchs had rejected his request to launch an expedition to the Indies. With the intervention of the prior and confessor of Queen Isabella, Juan Pérez, Columbus obtained that his project be heard. The painting is presented in a late 19th century frame.