Furniture Mahogany Veneer Brass Glass Foam Padding and Fabric 1950s

20th Century / 1901 - 2000

Chandelier in gilded bronze and ground glass. The open cartouche-shaped structure develops through 12 sliding arms with fluted bell-shaped candle holders and corolla-shaped bobeches over pierced acanthus jets, interspersed with 4 amethyst-colored terminals in the shape of an urn. The frame is centered by an urn-shaped column with a pinnacle terminal. Entirely decorated with transparent, amber and amethyst glass pendants, including a faceted sphere pendant. Attributable to Baccarat production.

The Penitent Magdalene and St. John the Baptist

Oil on slate. Two examples of oil painting on stone are proposed here, a pictorial genre that was particularly popular in the Venetian Republic between the 16th and 17th centuries, in its form of oil painting on blackboard or touchstone. The choice of such a dark stone as a background is not only linked to practical reasons (the proximity of the mines of Brescia and Val Brembana), but, as our two works clearly demonstrate, the emergence of the figures from the dark background responds to the light also full to the new needs of the painting of the time, which in the climate of the Counter-Reformation, tended to express not only the idealized existential certainties of the full Renaissance, but also the anxieties and the opening up to new phases, already tending with Tintoretto towards greater attention to reality and luministic contrasts, to then flow overwhelmingly into seventeenth-century research strongly focused on the contrasting combination of light and shadow. The two works presented here, well within the production of the Venetian area of ​​the first decades of the 17th century, propose two figures of saints, both hermits, placed on a dark, barely visible naturalistic background. The figure of Magdalene emerges from the darkness, leaning to follow the curve of the stone support; she is depicted looking questioningly towards the darkness, as if in a listening attitude, her left hand raised and the other resting on the remarkably shortened "memento mori". In front of her a scourge and the jar of ointment. Painted en pendant, Saint John the Baptist is represented as a young man, with a lamb at his feet, in his hand the processional cross with the banner "ecce agnus dei", while with his right hand he draws from the water source, recalling the episode that will see Jesus Christ baptized. In both paintings the figures stand out in a strong and incisive way thanks to the black that characterizes the slate plaque on which they are depicted. The two paintings, in an oval format, are presented in black wooden frames, from the late 19th century.

Iconic dining table with oval top model "Samo" designed by Carlo Scarpa in 1970 and produced by Simon; in white saccharoid marble.

Paris Third Quarter of the 19th Century

Napoleon III two-door sideboard, made by the cabinetmaker Georges-Alphonse-Bonifacio Monbro. Structure in ebony veneered oak, embellished with semi-precious stones and gilded bronzes. White marble top arranged within the edge, front with two doors decorated with reserves with vases of flowers and fruit made of stones in the centre, uprights at forty-five degrees, bracket feet. The bronzes, chiseled and gilded, portray leafy friezes, phytomorphic elements, godrons, rosettes, masks and volutes. The pilasters of the uprights are also made of gilded bronze, decorated with bunches and grape leaves and culminating with a caryatid and a telamon. Interior doors veneered in mahogany. Stamped in several parts on the hull and on the bronzes. Restorations and replacements.

18th Century / 1701 - 1800

Marie Theresa chandelier with 12 lights, dating back to the end of the 18th century. Iron branches, the supporting ones are covered in glass, the bobeches are in cast bronze. The chandelier is adorned with bevelled glass pendants and adorned with different motifs, alternating between them on the different floors. The central column was probably added in the 19th century.

Italy 17th century

Seventeenth-century sideboard with front with two doors surmounted on the top by a decorative support. The whole piece of furniture is made of walnut split into two by large pilasters, with a projecting cornice with indentations decorated with gilded highlights like the decorative frames and roundels. Italy 17th century

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)