Oil painting on canvas. Spanish school of the 19th century. The young woman, who wears a black cape over a lively yellow and white dress, has a rose stuck in one ear and wears elegant embossed pendant earrings; in her hand she holds a black mask, away from her face, from which she also pushes the hood away with the other hand, to reveal herself smiling and perhaps even a little mischievous. A sky of gray clouds opens up in a patch of blue to surround the figure, which stands out brightly. The painting is presented in an early 20th century frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Northern Italian school of the seventeenth century. In the portrait of this no longer young woman, dressed in an austere black dress that blends into the background, the white lace of the neck and sleeves and the detachable stomacher, or rather the richly embroidered bib to simulate a jewel, invented at the end of the '600 to cover the deep necklines of women's dresses, following the Catholic moralizing influence of the French court; the woman then exhibits a fine gold bracelet on her wrist. Restored and relined in the 19th century, the painting is presented in a late 19th-early 20th century frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Central Italian school of the late 1600s-early 18th century. The composition proposes a female bust in the centre, portrayed as if it were a sculptural effigy, for the monochrome that evokes marble; it is surrounded by a garland of colorful flowers, which stretch from twisted branches above, while a landscape fades in the background. This type of portrait came from a solution born in the Flemish environment and spread in Italy by Daniel Seghers. Restored and relined, the painting has slight drops of colour. It is presented in an antique frame.

Oil on canvas. Lombard school of the seventeenth century. A smiling young girl is portrayed in an elegant black dress, embellished with lace on the neckline and a play of red and green laces and ribbons on the sleeves, which match the red embroidered petticoat; she wears her jewels around her neck, wrists, ears, in the hairstyle of her hair, where the austerity of pearls is lightened by colored ribbons; she holds a bouquet of flowers in her hand, which emphasizes her gracefulness and grace. Restored and relined, on the second canvas there is written, probably a copy of the original on the first canvas, which indicates who the young woman is: \\\"Margh.a D. Gridonia Gonz. Agnella - Soada Maffei - D\\\'etta Anni XVIII\\\", followed by a coat of arms with the initials C FAS This writing, in addition to defining the name and age, highlights the young woman\\\'s belonging to the College of the Virgins of Jesus in Castiglione delle Stiviere, founded in 1608 by the Marquise Guidonia Gonzaga together with the two sisters Cinzia and Olimpia, all nephews of San Luigi Gonzaga. This college had the purpose of imparting an education to young noblemen or young people from good families, who, with the dowry donated to the college, contributed to the sustenance of the same. The portrait has minor flaws. It is presented in an ancient, non-coeval frame, with small shortcomings.

Oil painting on canvas. Italian school of the eighteenth century. In the portrait of this gentleman, the dressing gown made of an elegant floral fabric stands out in particular, in shades of brick red that recall the color of the wig. The severity of the pose and the austere gaze of the character almost contrast with the almost frivolous elegance of his clothing. The painting, restored and relined, is presented in a frame from the early 1900s.

Pencil, charcoal and white lead on paper. Signed (Amalia Bianchi?) and dated at the bottom right. Very effective is the use of different pigments that creates a play of chiaroscuri that underlines the figure. The portrait come in a 19th century wooden frame with leather leafy and floral inserts; it has missing parts and color drops.

Female Face 2001

Oil painting on canvas. Dated and signed on the back. Born in Seregno, Danilo Martinis was trained with Osvaldo Minotti. Painter and designer, he has furnished prestigious residences all over the world, his works are particularly appreciated in the United Arab Emirates and in Russia. He loves to express his thoughts through graphic-figurative images rendered through geometric effects and chromatic games, using mainly female figures as interpreters. In this work he proposes a close-up of a female face, enhancing its expressiveness through the play of colors in the ranges of yellow.

Oil painting on canvas. French school. At the bottom left are the signature and date written backwards; the signature is readable as H. Faillade. At the bottom right there is the Latin writing " Quando ex exilio redibit!!!"; (When he returns from exile!). This writing underlines the bond of the man portrayed with the young general depicted in the small picture that he holds in his hand, probably his relative and linked to the monarchy of Charles, the last sovereign of the Bourbon-France dynasty, absolutist and anti-liberal monarch, overthrown from the throne and fled in exile in 1830 during the July Revolution, known as the Second French Revolution. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Northern European school of the late 19th century. Unidentified signature lower right. The portrait presents a child in a maritime context: he is sitting on a rock on a beach, by the sea, he is dressed like a sailor and is holding a small toy sailing ship in his hand. The child is rather prim and serious. The painting has slight tears in the canvas and color stains. It is presented in an imposing late 19th century frame, with several missing and damaged plaster decorations.

Plato and Aristotle

Mixed media on canvas. Signature, title, date and dedication on the reverse. Paolo Baratella, a recently deceased artist from Ferrara, developed his art by composing vast pictorial cycles inspired by contemporary subjects; we therefore have series of works by him gathered under significant titles. From the mid-1980s and into the 2000s, his scenographic apparatuses became more enriched with cultural, pictorial and literal iconographic references. In particular, Baratella pays greater attention to the iconography of art, philosophy and history. In this work the artist presents the portraits of the two great Greek philosophers (taken from their traditional classical depictions) and shades them in a frame of pink-blue colours. The two individual canvases are placed side by side inside a worked wooden frame, on whose two horizontal crosspieces the words "Timaeus" a work written by Plato, and "Ethics", a recurring theme of Aristotelian philosophy, are engraved.

Oil on canvas. Portrait of a middle-aged woman, dressed entirely in black, perhaps for mourning. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a contemporary gilded frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated on the right "Rivoire 1884". It is the portrait of a woman, still young but very serious in her upright pose, in her unsmiling gaze, perhaps in mourning as suggested by the austere black dress she is wearing, together with the rather dark monochrome background. The work is presented in a contemporary frame, with some shortcomings that require restoration.

Vecchia Ciociara 1910

Pastels on paper. Signed and dated lower right. On the back there is a cartouche with the title and label of the Bolzani Art Gallery in Milan. Antonio Mancini was a realist painter, trained at the Neapolitan school of Morelli and Palizzi and later in Paris. He mainly dedicated himself to portraiture and genre scenes of popular or anecdotal taste, but while in an initial period he was close to nineteenth-century naturalism which led him to portray popular figures permeated with sadness (his street urchins), in a subsequent period he began to experiment different techniques, resorting to vivid flashes of light, placed on the canvas in lumps of violent color and bright flows, even reaching the use of extra-pictorial materials, such as colored glass, and proposing agitated figures, sometimes in imaginative disguises, an expression of his forte mental distress. This drawing, which belongs to the later production, presents the face of an elderly woman, (Ciociara by title), depicted in profile and surrounded by splashes of color that create a nuanced and lively halo. The work is presented in a contemporary frame (with small defects).

Oil painting on canvas. Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus is one of the Eleven Roman Emperors who were portrayed half-length in a series created by Titian in 1536-40 for Frederick II, Duke of Mantua. Passed first to the English royal house and then to the Spanish court, the paintings were all destroyed in a catastrophic fire at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid in 1734 and are now known only from copies made by various Flemish engravers between the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century. Among these, we have received the engraving of the portrait of Vitellius made by Aegidius Sadeler (1570 -1629), compared to which our copy presents some small differences, as was usual when works by other great artists were copied. The emperor, characterized by a prominent nose, thin lips, plump cheeks and a double chin, holds the staff of command and wears armor with a red cloak over it. The painting has been restored and relined.

Pencil, charcoal and white lead on paper. SIgned (Amalia Bianche?) and dated at the bottom right. Very effective is the use of different pigments that creat a play of chiaroscuri underlined by the figures. The portrait come in a 19th century wooden frame that had been embellished with leather floral and leafy inserts. It shows small drops of color and missing parts.

Wooden sculptures. It is a composition of two wooden heads, a male one and a female one, placed on a board and framed by a gilded frame of 19th century. The heads might had been the handles of a canteran of 17th century.

Family Album 2001

Oil and acrylic on canvas. Signature, date and title on the back. Concetto Pozzati was an eclectic artist: after his debut in the Informal climate, the artist reworked the influences of international Pop Art in a personal key, always remaining linked to a simplified, ironic figuration, with surrealist atmospheres. The work presented belongs to the 2001 series of Family Albums, in which the artist portrays the faces of his family members: here the same artist appears, on the left, flanked by the childish faces of his two children, and in addition the head of a cockerel, in accordance with Pozzati's habit of adding elements of everyday life into his works.

The Joachim Quartet 1904

Etching. Signed lower right; additional signature and date on the top corner of the sheet music. This is a famous portrait taken by the Viennese photographer and engraver Ferdinand Schmutzer, of the musical quartet directed by maestro Joseph Joachim (1831 -1907), famous Hungarian violinist, composer and conductor. Among the famous portraits painted by Schmutzer are those of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Richard Strauss. The work is presented in a frame.

Crayons on cardboard. Elegant portrait of a young lady, with a floral garland like a necklace. Presented in a contemporary golden frame.

Penci, charcoal and white lead on paper. Signed E. Bianchi at the bottom left. Very effective is the use of different pigments that creates a play of chiaroscuri that underlines the figure. The portrait comes in a 19th century wooden frame decorated with leather leafy and floral inserts; it shows small color drops and missing parts.