Nathaniel Dance-Holland

18th Century Oil Painting Portrait of a Military Officer

c. 1760-68

Giovanni Battista Paggi (Genoa 1554 – Genoa 1627) Venus, Bacchus and Ceres (Parallel title: ‘Sine Cerere et Baccho, friget Venus’) Oil on canvas 103 x 78 cm. - Framed 125 x 100 cm. ...

18th century English painter William Hogarth (London 1697 - 1764) School of Hudibras Triomphante (from the poem by Samuel Butler) Circa 1740, England Oil on canvas (62 x 50 cm. - F...

Portrait of Francisco de Reynoso y Baeza.   Secretary of Pope Pius V, abbot of Husillos and bishop of Córdoba. Francisci de Reynoso. Early 17th century. Small-format portrait from the late Renaissance period. Spanish school. Size: Cm 19 x Cm 13.5 Oil on wooden panel. On the back the fine tablet is strengthened (already in ancient times) by a sheet of parchment. About 1600-1610. As often in Mannerist / Late Renaissance portraits, the image of the character is accompanied by the writing that runs at the top, adding a celebratory, historicising touch to the effigy. Let's bring back the sentence here: DON FRANCISCO DE REINOSO. CAMARERO SECRETO IESCALCO PIO QUINTO OBISCOPO CORDOBA. 68 (? O 7?) (1534, Autillo de Campos, Spain - 1601, Córdoba) Francisco de Reynoso was a Spanish cleric, chief chamberlain, and secretary to Pope Pius V, abbot of Husillos, and bishop of Córdoba. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father was the seventh Lord of Autillo de Campos, and his mother was Juana de Baeza y de las Casas, daughter of Manuel de Baeza, a lawyer of the Royal Council and at the Court of Valladolid. Francisco de Reynoso was deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary and showed a strong inclination toward religion and piety from an early age. He studied Latin, arts, and theology at the University of Salamanca. In 1562, he traveled to Rome with his brothers Pedro and Luis. In January 1566, following the death of Pope Pius IV, Cardinal Antonio Michele Ghislieri was elected pope, becoming Pius V. From this period until Ghislieri's death in 1572, Francisco de Reynoso served as his chief chamberlain and secretary. After Pope Pius V died, Francisco de Reynoso returned to Spain and lived for several years in the city of Palencia, where his brother Manuel was a canon. He supported the Society of Jesus when it was established in Palencia, providing alms to the school's clergy and funding chairs of Letters and Theology at his own expense, as well as donating a significant number of books. During the brief outbreak of the Black Plague...

17th century Lombard painter Saint Michael Archangel Oil on canvas 139 x 75 cm. - Framed 156 x 91 cm Antique painting with St. Michael the Archangel, immortalised full-length as a ...

Jan van Gelder, Italianised as Giovanni Vangheldri (Antwerp 1621 – Modena 1685) Portrait of the Duchess Vittoria Farnese d'Este (Parma, 1618 – Modena, 1649) wife of Francesco I d'E...

Oil on canvas 50 x 40 inches; 127 x 101.6 cm Framed dimensions: 151.5 x 127 cm Inscribed on plinth: ‘VOTIS X ET XX’ Not signed Painted c.1748 Collections: Christie’s London, 23rd December 1954, lot.272; J. Singer; Somerville Simpson Ltd, London, by 1985; The Matthiesen Gallery, London; Richard Feigen, New York; Matthew Rutenberg, New York to 2019; Lowell Libson and Jonny Yarker Ltd. Literature: Stella Rudolph, La Pittura del’ 700 a Roma, Milan, 1983, reproduced pl.133; Jacob Simon, Handel, a celebration of his life and times 1685-1759, exh. cat. London, (National Portrait Gallery), 1985, no.196; Catherine Whistler, Baroque Later Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, London, 2016, pp.102-105, reproduced p.104 Exhibited: London, National Portrait Gallery, Handel, a celebration of his life and times 1685-1759, 1985-86, no.196, reproduced p.198 This powerful portrait of the antiquarian and courtier Sir Charles Frederick was completed in 1748 by the Roman painter Andrea Casali. Frederick, as comptroller of the royal laboratory, one of the ‘great officers’ of the Board of Ordinance at Woolwich, had just been responsible for the famed pyrotechnic display celebrating the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle: the so-called ‘Royal Fireworks’ for which George Frederick Handel composed music. Casali’s portrait pays tribute to Frederick’s role as comptroller of the royal laboratory, showing him with a firing diagram and mortar, it also points to Frederick’s interests as an antiquarian with the inclusion of antique relief. Casali had first met Frederick in Rome in 1738, where he had painted his portrait, Frederick subsequently encouraged Casali to travel to London. This probably accounts for the unusual format; rather than a modern man of science, Casali casts Frederick as an alchemist bent on some mystic discovery, as such, it is one of the most unusual portraits of the period. Andrea Casali was a pupil of Sebastiano Conca and then of Francesco Trevisani, who recommended him to the Spanish court in 1736. He enjoyed some success in Rome as a painter of frescoes and altarpieces, notably a large cycle of Scenes from the Life of St Dominic at the cloister of S. Sisto Vecchio, for which he was made a Knight of the Golden Spur in 1729. Casali began painting Grand Tourist portraits in Rome around 1738. His first portrait of Sir Charles Frederick is dated that year Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), it casts Frederick as a focused scholar, showing him seated at an elaborately carved console table, hard at work. In common with other Grand Tour portraiture of the period, Casali includes a famous Roman landmark in the background, in this case the façade of the Pantheon. Horace Walpole noted that it was thanks to the encouragement of ‘Mr Frederick and his Friends at Rome’ that Casali travelled to London in 1741. Charles Frederick was a fascinating Augustan polymath. Born at Fort St George, Madras, where his father, Sir Thomas Frederick, was governor, he successively matriculated at New College, Oxford (1725), was called to the Middle Temple (1728), became a Fellow of the Royal Society (1731) and Director of the Society of Antiquaries (1735). His interests were wide ranging. Frederick was an amateur architect, he designed the monument to Lucy, Lady Lyttleton, in Hagley Church and the monument to Thomas Miller, bishop of Waterford, in Highclere church, Hampshire. He was a numismatist and collector of antiquities, as well as an amateur scientist. It was in the last capacity that he was appointed comptroller of the royal laboratory at Woolwich and clerk of the deliveries in 1746, this was the most junior of the ‘great officers’ who made up the membership of the royal Board of Ordnance. This appointment came through the good offices of the master-general of the Ordnance, a fellow antiquarian, John, 2nd Duke of Montagu. As comptroller, Frederick was responsible for the fireworks celebration of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, for which Handel composed his celebrated music. As Horace Walpole wrote to his cousin, Henry Seymour Conway: ‘Charles Frederick has turned all his virtu into fireworks, and, by his influence with the Ordnance has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of Peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with a crash, as if it was the day of judgement, and fall a-dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoarser on the superiority that his fireworks will have over the Roman naumachia.’ Performed in Green Park, the fireworks were mounted on a temporary structure designed by the architect Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni decorated by Adrea Soldi and Casali. Casali’s second portrait of Frederick was completed following the success of the firework display. In this remarkable image, we discover Frederick at work, dressed in almost monastic garb, pouring over an impossibly large tome propped on an antique altar. The altar is identifiable as a Roman relief depicting Victory writing on a shield, the original is at Villa Medici in Rome, but was engraved by Pietro Santi Bartoli...

Bartolomeo Schedoni (Modena 1578 - Parma 1615) workshop of Portrait of a child (Alessandro Farnese?) First half 17th century Oil on canvas (95 x 66 cm. - In frame 109 x 80) This i...

Attributed to Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo (Castile 1611 - Madrid 1667) pupil and collaborator of Diego Velázquez Portrait of Charles II, King of Spain, as a child (1661 -1700) Spain, c. 1670 Oil on canvas 68 x 49 cm. - In antique frame 96 x 75 cm. The analysis of this portrait, and in particular the style with which its features have been outlined, brings us back to the great tradition of the 17th century Spanish school. The portrait depicts the young King Charles II of Spain, dressed in typical Spanish fashion, the youngest and only son of Philip IV of Spain and his second wife Maria Anna of Austria, as well as the last of the Habsburg dynasty to rule Spain. which portrayed the young ruler in full length at the age of four (dated 1665), dressed in a black suit and cape, and a large feathered...

Guido Reni (Bologna 1575 - 1642) Workshop of Probably Gian Domenico Cerrini, the Cavalier Perugino (Perugia 1609 - Rome 1681) Saint Catherine of Alexandria Oil on canvas 65 x 5...

Sir David Wilkie RA (18 November 1785 – 1 June 1841) “The Parish Beadle” Oil on canvas Although unsigned, this beautiful painting is undoubtedly an original work by David Wilkye as...