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Category :Art Market |
Written by: Silvia Bosi
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Antiques At Sotheby’s Milan
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Monday 14 December 2009
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The appointment with old master paintings, 19th-century paintings, furniture and majolica is scheduled for tomorrow, 15th December, at Sotheby’s Milan venue. For the Christmas period the renowned auction house is proposing, under the Christmas tree, a new edition of the auction organised last June – also in Milan – which had gathered in a single event antiques of various type, and had met great success, totalling 3,715,750 euros. Now about 150 pieces including old paintings, 19th-century paintings, ceramics and furniture, are about to be proposed to the audience in all their variety of genre, price and taste.
Objects of great value stand out among the first 50 lots, the section of old paintings: the third piece, a precious altarpiece attributed to the Maestro di Sant’Ivo and dated around the second decade of the 15th century, is presented in all its golden splendour and its beauty for an estimate between 40,000 and 60,000 euros. The small devotional panel, 55,5×35 cm, Madonna with Child between Saint John the Baptist, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Dorothy and Saint Antonio the Abbot is a typical example of the works of this artist, who was probably an apprentice of Agnolo Gaddi and, about twenty years before this work, active in the Chapel of Santa Croce in Florence. Highlight among the old master paintings is definitely Portrait of Diego D’Aragona Pignatelli by Francesco Solimena. The figure portrayed is the Duke of Terranova and Monteleone and of the Sacred Roman Empire and the painting was probably realised between 1731 and 1732 as attested by the presence of the decoration worn on his chest, received from Charles VI of Habsburg exactly in that period. The noble and authoritative posture of the subject, the elegance of the clothes, the drapery, the curtain, the architecture in the background and the presence of the slave contribute to conferring a high-sounding and celebrative tone to the painting. A beautiful example of Louis Gauffier’s historical and mythological painting is Ulysses finds Achilles among Lycomedes’s daughters, a large oil on canvas presented with an estimate of 100,000-150,000 euros. The French artist of the Salons, who lived and completed his formation in Rome and Florence, expressed himself through a rigorous and ordered neoclassical compositional scheme, where his search for formal perfection is clear, to the detriment, however, of narrative emotivity and pathos.
In the section of 19th-century paintings the star, with two valuable pieces, is without doubt Federico Zandomeneghi: a pastel on paper, Sull’erba (On the grass), estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 euros, and the oil on canvas Signora che dispone i fiori (Lady arranging flowers) which, with an estimate of 180,000-250,000 euros is aspiring to be the top lot of the entire auction. The painting can be dated back to 1899, a mature and successful period for the artist who, undervalued in Italy, made his fortune in Paris. It is in that climate of impressionist ferment that Zandomeneghi conceived this canvas, where the result of his cultural exchange with the Parisian artistic reality is clear, although he still gave a personal tone to it. Another renowned name of the 19th-century Italian art scene is Francesco Hayez, whose Portrait of Gentleman (Duke Manolo Nunez Falcò) is at auction with an estimate of 50,000-70,000 euros. The person portrayed was identified thanks to the indications left by the owners of the painting who preceded the last ones, which allowed to compare it to another portrait by Hayez, realised in 1855, representing Princess Mariquita d’Adda Falcò. What appears clear in both paintings is the wish to pay tribute to the Spanish origins of the two characters, through references to Iberian portrait painting – like Velazquez’s typical pictorial language – and to the typically Spanish fashion and costumes. There is also an interesting oil by Alessio Issupoff (estimate 50,000-70,000 euros), of orientalizing subject and flavour, and one by Filippo Palizzi (estimate 40,000-60,000 euros), Gli scavi di Pompei (The excavations of Pompei), a work that narrates simultaneously two realities, the popular one of characters that animate the scene, and the historical one, through the testimony of a famous archaeological finding.
The last part of the auction is dedicated to furniture and majolica. The last pages of the catalogue, therefore, feature plates, statues, chests of drawers, cups, candlesticks and mirrors, but among many refined objects some truly original pieces emerge: in particular two clocks stir curiosity. One is an important wall clock signed Manelli in Bologna (estimate 18,000-25,000 euros), dated from the mid-18th century, which was given as a gift from Pope Pius VII in 1800 to the prior of the monastery of Santa Giustina in Padua during his trip from Venice to Rome to sit on the papal throne; the other is a German 17th-century table clock, in golden bronze, with an unusual hexagonal case which leaves the internal mechanisms visible. It has an accessible estimate: 8,000-12,000 euros.
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