XIX and XX Century Paintings and Sculptures
Via Pontaccio, 12 Milan
Auction: 9, 10, 11 April 2019
Viewing: 5, 6, 7 April 2019 (10 am/1 pm-2.30/6.30 pm)
The 19th and 20th Century Paintings and Sculptures sale, that will be held on the 22nd of May at Palazzo Crivelli, best expresses the increasingly careful focus of the department on the market and on collecting.
"The catalogue featues works of great quality, selected with the aim of identifying stylistic and historic peculiarities in line with the taste of collectors, from the neophyte to the expert" observes Matteo Gardonio, the new Department Specialist. The international masterpiece and top lot of the auction, Il manto giallo rosso by Federico Zandomeneghi is a magnificent oil on canvas, that after prestigious changes of property, from the Parisian collection of Durand-Ruel (photo archive fot. n. 5226), to that of Angelo Sommaruga – also in Paris – reaches Milan, initially in the Carini and successively in Sperati collection, and on to the present owners.
The Roman-Neapolitan area is represented by works of Antonio Mancini, Vincenzo Irolli and Alessio Issupoff, who are united by the chromatic sparkle and pictorial harmony that made them famous on the international market.
A little more sophisticated is the choice among the Venetian masters, traditionally bound to color, of which the proposed works are by Alessandro Milesi, by Pietro Fragiacomo and one by Vittore Antonio Cargnel, little known author to be rediscovered.
An important seclection of paintings will be dedicated to the views of the city of Milan, in which artists such as Angelo Inganni, Carlo Canella, Federico Moja, Arturo Ferrari and Emilio Gola, to name a few, tell of its 19th century identity.
Two extraordinary Induno, closely related to the history of United Italy and unique evidence of the decorations that adorned the old Stazione Centrale, depicting respectively Raffaello e la Fornarina a Roma and Dante e Beatrice a Firenze. These are flanked by two splendid canvases of the Brianza area by Giovanni Renica, one of which represents Villa Arconati.
Musica ai Giardini Pubblici, a large canvas of Filippo Carcano also mentioned by Ugo Ojetti and other famous writers of the time, is characterized by rapid brushstrokes, where shadow and light generate a kaleidoscopic impression. Malinconia (1865 circa) also known as La Castellana, Mestizia or Profilo di Giovane donna, by a 'young' Tranquillo Cremona and long considered missing, is a fundamental piece for the reconstruction of the artist’s catalogue.
French taste is well represented by artists well-known beyond the Alps and by curious and enigmatic works: the painter Consuelo Fould which portrays the sculptor Mathieu Meusnier, the pastel artist Constant Joseph Brochard and his algid Flora, Emile Louis Foubert with the Allegoria della Verità, and a view, unedited as well as unexpected, of Rue Mouffetard signed by Ludovico Cavaleri.
A ‘monografic' nucleus consists of the section dedicated to Guido Cinotti, with a selection of works exhibited in the anthological exhibition at Galleria Pesaro in 1934, and to Ugo Bernasconi.
To be highlighted among the sculptures is the Garibaldino ferito (Rimembranze della campagna of the 1860) by Giuseppe Grandi, almost a young self-portrait of the artist, the neo-eighteenth-century thinker (Pensieri) by Attilio Prendoni, the group by Tullo Golfarelli (Musica rustica) and the Salomé by Claudio Botta. Also worth mentioning is the Testa femminile by Vincenzo Gemito and a loving Maternità by Franco Bargiggia, along with Personaggi illustri by Pierre Jean David D'Angers, a series of classic portraits from Balzac to Lord Byron, passing through Rossini and Stendhal.
The catalogue includes two works of great charm by Thomas Sidney Cooper, in particular the large unpublished canvas Cattle in the pasture signed and dated 1849, period in which the artist anticipates Rosa Bonheur's stylistic solutions.
With an eye to the 20th century, we find the Paesaggio in Brianza by Emilio Gola: a fundamental painting that could be ascribed with difficulty to the 19th century style, but rather stands out as forerunner of the landscape researches of Mario Sironi or of Arturo Tosi.
At auction also some engravings by Edouard Manet, Giovanni Fattori, an Autoritratto by Piero Marussig, small oils by Paolo Sala, Giuseppe Casciaro and Giulio Aristide Sartorio.