Painter: Guido Reni
Colors: 90
Price: 5000 Euro
Dimensions: 30 * 39 cm

Guido Reni (4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style.

Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the “newly embarked”, or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni’s painting was thematic and eclectic in style.

Jesus is shown after the Mocking of Christ when he was crowned with thorns. New Testament (e.g. John 19: 1-3).

This painting was inspired by one of the numerous versions of this subject painted by Guido Reni (such as that in Paris, Louvre). The picture, which may have been painted as late as the early 18th century, has a provenance from the collection of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga in Rome. It can be seen in a painting by Giovanni Paolo Panini which shows a view of Valenti’s gallery, painted in 1749 (Hartford, Wadsworth Athenaeum).

Painter: Johannes Vermeer
Colors: 90
Price: 5000 Euro
Dimensions: 35 * 49 cm

This is one Vermeer’s last works. It shows a woman undergoing an intense religious moment.

The work is full of symbolism. Vermeer probably used the book Iconoligia by the Italian author Cesare Ripa. The woman symbolizes faith. The white in her dress stands for purity, the blue for the heavenly sky. The hand on her chest indicates that faith lives in the heart. She literally has the world under her feet.

She seems to be looking at the glass sphere hung from the ceiling. There is no certainty about the meaning of the sphere. Some say it may depict the human mind, capable of reflection and of containing infinity.

In the foreground lies a snake crushed by a large stone. The scene symbolizes Christ destroying Satan. Next to it is an apple, the symbol of the original sin.

The woman is seated on a platform. Next to her is a table with a crucifix, a goblet and a book (bible or missal). The painting in the background is a Crucifixion by Jacob Jordaens.

The room may very well be a hidden church. In the second half of the 17th century Catholics in the Northern Netherlands were increasingly being persecuted. They had to take refuge to hidden churches to celebrate mass.

Painter: François-Joseph Navez
Colors: 90
Price: 6000 Euro
Dimensions: 40 * 34 cm

The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1824
This unusual depiction of the Massacre of the Innocents, signed and dated 1824 on the golden bowl in the foreground, is one of a series of religious paintings which Navez executed following his return from Rome in 1821. Here, the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem of two years old and under, as King Herod sought to rid himself of the Christ Child (Matthew 2:16), is depicted only in a frenzied vignette on the upper left. Rather than mayhem, Navez explored the personal, intensely emotional dimensions of the tragedy.
His use of half-length figures close to the picture plane, and of saturated colors reminiscent of 17th-century Flemish traditions, recall the history paintings that David was executing at the same time. The painting moves away from Davidian naturalism, however, towards a more austere purity of line and stylization of form which owe a debt to Ingres, as does the languid arm that the mother in the center folds across her head. The enamel paint surface that Navez achieves is also reminiscent of Ingres. Original to Navez, perhaps, is the anticlockwise pinwheel movement of the four heads on the right which comes to a halt in the confrontation of profiles on the left.

François-Joseph Navez (Charleroi, 1787 - Brussels, 1869) was a Belgian neo-classical painter. A pupil of Jacques-Louis David, he spent five years in Italy between 1817 and 1822. He was a very successful portrait painter. He also painted many mythological and historic subjects.

Painter: Raphael Sanzio
Colors: 90
Price: 10000 Euro
Dimensions: 45 * 46.8 cm

Raphael’s Deposition was painted for Atalanta Baglioni in memory of her son Grifonetto, who was killed in the fighting for the dominance of Perugia, and housed in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia in 1507. It remained there for 101 years, until it was removed at night with the complicity of the priest and sent to Pope Paul V, who gave it to his nephew for his collection and it thus became the property of the Borghese family. After the Treaty of Tolentino the painting was sent to Paris in 1797. When it came back to Rome in 1816, only the central scene was returned to the Borghese collection, while the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, remained in the Vatican Museums (the ornamentation surmounting it by Tiberio Alfani is in the National Gallery of Umbria).
This large altarpiece presents the scene like a Roman relief and is inspired by the reliefs on ancient Roman sarcophagi depicting the transportation of Meleager. It is interesting to note that in his preliminary sketch the artist has drawn Christ lying in the ground, as in the painting by Perugino, but when he executed the painting he decided on the antique form of transportation, as seen in a relief he probably studied on the Montalvo sarcophagus in Florence (now in the Torno Collection, Milan). But the influence of Michelangelo can also be seen in the composition of Christ (cf. the Pietà, St.Peter’s) and the figure seen in the profile supporting the Madonna repeats a similar pose in the Doni Tondo (in the Uffizi, completed a year before the Deposition).

Painter: Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Colors: 90
Price: 4000 Euro
Dimensions: 40 * 25.4 cm

The Entombment of Christ, c. 1656, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591 — 1666), best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for squinter, a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed. He is especially noted for his many superb drawings.

Painter: Vincenzo Catena
Colors: 90
Solded to private collection
Dimensions: 25 * 28.8 cm

Christ bearing the Cross, c. 1520/1530, Liechtenstein Museum Italian, Vienna, Austria

Vincenzo Catena (1470 - 1531) was a Venetian painter of the Renaissance. He is also known as Vincenzo de Biagio. His interaction in the humanist circles allowed him to meet Giorgione, with whom he had some sort of partnership. Catena’s paintings were mainly influenced by Bellini and Titian.

Painter: Simon Vouet
Colors: 90
Price: 5000 Euro
Dimensions: 43.8 * 30 cm

Christ On The Cross, c. 1636, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon

Simon Vouet(1590 - 1649) was a French painter and draftsman, who helped introduce the Italian Baroque style to France. Vouet was born in Paris and held his training under his father, also a painter.

Painter: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Colors: 66
Solded to private collection
Dimensions: 40 * 40 cm

The Doni Tondo or Doni Madonna is the one of only three surviving panel paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti (c. 1503), and the only one to be finished. It is in the Uffizi of Florence in its original frame, designed by Michelangelo himself. The painting was likely commissioned by Agnolo Doni, a wealthy weaver, to commemorate his marriage to Maddalena Strozzi of the Strozzis, a powerful Tuscan family. The painting is in the form of a tondo, or round frame, which is frequently associated with marriage in the Renaissance.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Painter: Sandro Botticelli
Colors: 90
Price: 4500 Euro
Dimensions: 45 * 30.4 cm

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting, and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art.

Painter: Bernardino Luini
Colors: 90
Price: 8000 Euro
Dimensions: 40 * 47.4 cm

Bernardino Luini (1480 - 1532) was a North Italian painter from Leonardo’s circle. He was known especially for his graceful female figures with slightly squinted eyes.