Per Ambrogio Bon: un documento inedito e un nuovo dipinto

The personality of Ambrogio Bon, perhaps Johann Carl Loth’s closest collaborator, raised the interest of various scholars in recent years, who tried to focus his profile in relation to that of his more famous master, but the scarcity of documents and works has so far confined him in the role of a minor artist, not yet well defined. The present contribution reveals the date of his death, hitherto unknown, and adds a new work to his catalogue, an interesting altarpiece depicting “San Filippo Neri kneeling in front of the Virgin and Child”, kept in the Venetian church of San Giuseppe di Castello, which can be put alongside the few certain works of the painter

Incontri inaspettati: Pietro Vecchia nella Bottega dell’antiquario di Oreste Da Molin

This paper presents a new painting by Pietro Vecchia (1602 c.-1678), probably dating to the sixth decade of the Seventeenth century and representative of his most classical style, formerly deposited in the Museum of Arad (Romania) with an attribution to Carlo Caliari. The work displays an interesting iconography, Saturn who kidnaps Cupid from Venus: a depiction of the purest Baroque spirit, aimed to represent that Time takes away Love. We do not know the original location of the canvas, or who commissioned it, but it is of great interest that we can recognize it – albeit with some variations – within a painting by Oreste Da Molin recently rediscovered, dated 1880, depicting an antique shop. Among the paintings on display in this shop there is also a David and Goliath, which can be recognized with another work – by an anonymous author – presented here with a discussion of its possible paternity

A Drawing for Sebastiano Ricci's Stories of Pope Paul III

Despite its extensiveness, the recognized corpus of drawings by Sebastiano Ricci is still missing sheets that can be securely linked to works from his early period. A heretofore unpublished drawing in the Louvre is now recognized as a preparatory sketch for "Pope Paul III Establishing the Jesuit Order", one of the paintings that Ricci made c. 1687\u201388 for Ranuccio II Farnese, now in the Museo Civico di Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza. This new sketch enables us to establish an important milestone in the painter\u2019s early activity as a draftsman, and it may provide a further point of reference from which to arrange and organize his graphic oeuvre chronologically

Federico Cervelli "pittore di buona macchia"

Federico Cervelli is one of the leading characters of the Venetian painting of the Seventeenth century whose catalogue, until now, had not been offered a convincing chronological reconstruction, lacking even the most basic biographical details, such as his date of birth. This study rebuilds the painter\u2019s biography with new archival data and proposes a new chronology of his corpus, including several additions, while at the same time investigating his relationships with the major \u2018players\u2019 of his time: Pietro Liberi, Luca Giordano, Giuseppe Diamantini, Nicol\uf2 Bambini, Giovanni Carboncino

La Scuola del Nudo: dagli studi dei pittori alle sale dell'Accademia

This paper explores the tradition of life drawing in Venice before the Academy of Fine Arts was officially opened in 1750. It delves into the practice of copy from the antiques, dissecting of corpses and life drawing activity in Venetian ateliers from the early Renaissance to the XVIII century, comparing it with what happened in other Italian cities and underlining one of its peculiar aspects, the presence of women as models in Venetian \u201cacademies\u201d

Un Narciso di Pietro Negri nella Galleria di Belle Arti di Ostrava

A recent exhibition of sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Venetian paintings from Silesian and Moravian collections, held in Brno, presented an interesting Narcissus (Ostrava, Fine Arts Gallery) attributed to Francesco Ruschi. This picture is here recognized as an important, high quality work by the Venetian artist Pietro Negri (1628 c.-1679), one of the prominent members of the so called \u201ctenebrist\u201d movement. The painting is discussed in the context of other works by the artist; a few remarks are given to its not so common subject, which Leon Battista Alberti regarded as a metaphor for the painter\u2019s creative ability