Cais do Porto, Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Cais do Porto, Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Angra dos Reis - RJ
Foto Bellieni
Fotografia - Cartão Postal

Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, Brasil

Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, Brasil
São João del-Rei - MG
Fotografia - Cartão Postal

Abrigo da Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil

Abrigo da Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil
São José do Rio Pardo - SP
Fotografia 

Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil

Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil
São José do Rio Pardo - SP
Fotografia - Cartão Postal

Abrigo da Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil

Abrigo da Cabana de Euclides da Cunha, São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, Brasil
São José do Rio Pardo - SP
Fotografia - Cartão Postal

Euclides da Cunha nasceu em 1856, na Fazenda Saudade, em Cantagalo, Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Foi militar, engenheiro civil, comentarista político, repórter e poeta. A serviço do jornal O Estado de São Paulo, fez a cobertura da Guerra dos Canudos. Interessado neste movimento, aprofundou seus estudos que resultaram na obra “Os Sertões”, escrita entre 1896 e 1900. O mérito do tombamento da cabana se deve unicamente ao valor histórico, por ter sido nela que Euclides da Cunha redigiu parte do livro Os Sertões enquanto supervisionava a construção da ponte metálica sobre o Rio Pardo. A pequena cabana, originalmente de sarrafo e teto de zinco, encontra-se atualmente revestida por placas de cimento amianto e o piso, antes em terra batida, por patamar de concreto. No seu interior foram colocados alguns pertences de Euclides da Cunha: escrivaninha, vestuário e livros. Está protegida por uma redoma de vidro.

Vista da Scuola Grande di San Marco, Veneza, Itália

Vista da Scuola Grande di San Marco, Veneza, Itália
Veneza - Itália
Fotografia

Vista da Scuola Grande di San Marco, Veneza, Itália (View of the Scuola Grande di San Marco) - Francesco Zanin

Vista da Scuola Grande di San Marco, Veneza, Itália (View of the Scuola Grande di San Marco) - Francesco Zanin
Veneza - Itália
Coleção privada
OST - 44x65 - 1862

The Scuola Grande di San Marco is a building in Venice, Italy, designed by the well-known Venetian architects Pietro Lombardo, Mauro Codussi, and Bartolomeo Bon. It was originally the home to one of the Scuole Grandi of Venice, or six major confraternities, but is now the city's hospital. It faces the Campo San Giovanni e Paolo, one of the largest squares in the city.

The edifice was built by the Confraternity of San Marco in 1260 to act as its seat. In 1485, however, it was destroyed by a large fire, and rebuilt in the following twenty years under a new design by Pietro Lombardo, with a fund established by the members. The façade, a masterwork with delicately decorated niches and pilasters, and with white or polychrome marble statues, was later completed by Mauro Codussi. While decorated with the polished marble elements of Renaissance classicism, the proliferation of arches and niches adds a retrogressive Byzantine flavor, an architectural feature of many conservative Venetian styles. One of the most notable aspects of the façade is the use of trompe-l'œil archways and portals on the ground floor, all executed in different types of marble.

Three of the greatest Italian explorers of the fifteenth century: Giosafat Barbaro, façade, and Alvise da Mosto were members of the Scuola.

Jacopo Tintoretto furnished the Scuola with three paintings Miracle of the Slave (also known as The Miracle of St. Mark, 1548), St Mark's Body Brought to Venice, painted between 1562 and 1566, both paintings are currently housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, and Finding of the body of St Mark also painted between 1562 and 1566, an now held in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

In 1819 it became an Austrian military hospital. It is now a civil hospital.

Since 2013 it is part of the Polo Museale della Scuola Grande di San Marco.

Vista do Palazzo Ducale, Veneza, Itália (Venice, View of the Palazzo Ducale) - Francesco Zanin

Vista do Palazzo Ducale, Veneza, Itália (Venice, View of the Palazzo Ducale) - Francesco Zanin
Veneza - Itália
Coleção privada
OST - 44x65 - 1862

Madona do Rosário com Anjos (Madonna of Rosary with Angels) - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Madona do Rosário com Anjos (Madonna of Rosary with Angels) - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Coleção privada
OST - 246x156 - 1735

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the greatest painter of the Venetian Rococo, painted this signed and dated Madonna of the Rosary in 1735, during his early mature period. The dramatic composition, grand scale, and bold coloring of this painting draw on the rich history of Italian Renaissance religious art. At the same time, the Madonna’s monumental stature and elegant pose against the imagined backdrop point toward the fantastical, theatrical elements of the Grand Manner for which Tiepolo was celebrated. Most works of this caliber by Tiepolo remain in situ or in major museums. In fact this seems to be the only large-scale altarpiece still in private hands. The legendary provenance of this painting includes influential collector Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar and South African diamond magnate Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson and his daughter, Princess Ida Louise Labia.

Despite the prominent signature and date and large size of this canvas, its original commission has yet to be determined. It was almost certainly painted for a Dominican church or oratory, as it was this order that promoted the cult of the Rosary throughout Europe. The popular devotional practice of praying the rosary enjoyed renewed emphasis during the papacy of the Dominican Pope Benedict XIII (1724 – 30). Here the Virgin holds a rosary in her outstretched left hand, as if offering the beads to a devotee, and she wears the less typical red cloak that associated her with royalty as well as with the roses symbolically associated with the rosary prayers.

By 1735, the demand for large altarpieces in Venetian churches had diminished, and Tiepolo had not yet received a major religious commission there. In the same year, he was employed in Udine, however, and this altarpiece may have been intended for a church in that provincial city. Catherine Whistler has also suggested this painting could have been made for a church in Vicenza, where Tiepolo is recorded in 1734, decorating the Villa Loschi (Zileri dal Verme). Around this time Tiepolo was asked to decorate the Royal Palace in Stockholm—an assignment he was able to turn down due to the demand for his works in Italy.

Art historians have recognized the importance of this painting for over a century. Antonio Morassi first suggested that a bozzetto from the Count Seilern bequest to the Courtauld Institute was a study for the present altarpiece, though Anna Pallucchini and Helen Braham dated the sketch a decade earlier than our painting, and Massimo Gemin and Filippo Pedrocco in 1993 rejected any relationship between the two works. However it seems likely that Tiepolo began the oil sketch for another commission and it remained in his studio, where it inspired the 1735 painting. Notable iconographic similarities exist between the two pictures: the Madonna, raised on a pedestal and surrounded by angels, wears red rather than conventional blue, an angel draws back her veil, and she holds a rosary in her left hand and her Son in her right. In our picture, Tiepolo idealized the Virgin’s features and exaggerated her contrapposto pose as well as placed her rosary centrally to communicate the purpose of the altarpiece.

In addition to his own oil sketch, Tiepolo ingeniously synthesized multiple sources of stylistic inspiration to produce this innovative altarpiece. Giuseppe Pavanello connected the Madonna’s memorable pose with Antonio Corradini’s sculpture of a similar Madonna of the Rosary in the Chiesa delle Eremite, Venice, created in the early 1720s. Indeed, the present Madonna’s placement on a stone pedestal before a column and curtain and her elongated stature suggest conventions of sculpture, and both Tiepolo’s and Corradini’s subjects stretch their hand out with a mannered arrangement of fingers to offer the rosary to a supplicant. 

In his Villa Loschi frescoes in Vicenza, Tiepolo had introduced statuesque female allegorical figures that likely inspired his treatment of the Virgin here. An Immaculate Conception still in situ in Vicenza and dated 1733-34 features the same facial type for the Madonna. The latter painting in its original altar faced an altar that had been decorated earlier by Giambattista Piazzetta (1682 – 1754). Tiepolo certainly knew Piazzetta’s works, in particular the 1725 Vision of St. Philip Neri for Santa Maria della Fava in Venice, where Tiepolo had also painted The Education of the Virgin, dateable to circa 1732. Piazzetta’s Madonna looks down from above with a commanding presence as she holds the Christ Child on her right hip, and two angels lift her veil; Tiepolo was clearly looking at his older contemporary’s works when creating the present altarpiece.

Whistler has pointed out even older sources for certian motifs in the Madonna of the Rosary: the gold brocade hanging behind the Madonna recalls early Venetian masters like Giovanni Bellini, and the attendant angel kneeling in the left foreground echoes the placement of similar figures in the works of Mannerist painters Correggio and Parmigianino. The overall emotion and grandiosity of the Venetian masters Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese is evident in Tiepolo's works from the 1730s, and paying homage to these artists was likely encouraged by his patrons. From the same stylistic period in Tiepolo's oeuvre is the Adoration of the Christ Child in St. Mark’s, Venice, which shares with the present picture and with the 16th-century Venetian painters the bold primary colors and chiaroscuro, strong diagonal composition, and inclusion of attendant angel as well as a putto floating in on a cloud that adds grace to the scene.

Though the early provenance of the altarpiece is unknown, its ownership history is well documented from the 1820s. The first confirmed owner of the painting was John Webb, Esq., who amassed an impressive collection of Old Masters. It was previously believed that Webb sold this Tiepolo in 1824 with George Stanley, as he had sold about thirty paintings with Stanley in 1823 and a "Tiepolo: Madonna" appears in an 1824 catalogue. In fact, we have confirmed that it was instead sold with Webb's entire remaining collection on 11 June 1829 with Harry Phillips. Along with the Tiepolo, Webb had owned altarpieces from Italian churches and works by Raphael, Giulio Romano, Caravaggio, David, Greuze, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. This painting is described in the sale catalogue as “a grand altar piece of the largest dimensions, representing the Virgin and Child, with attendant Figures, Angels, &c. This work is the undoubted chef-d’oeuvre of the master, and displays, in an eminent degree, all the excellencies of the Venetian school—splendid and harmonious colouring in union with the most correct and classical drawing. Nothing can exceed the grace and dignity of the whole composition. The form and attitude of the Virgin, the graceful contour, and rich glowing tints of the head, the management of the drapery, &c. give an air of majestic and divine sweetness to this figure, which can scarcely be surpassed by any production of its class. The accessories are all of the most appropriate description; and for breadth and boldness of colour, with the most perfect harmony, this picture may be justly pronounced equal to any of the best performances of the Italian masters.”

The next illustrious owner of the altarpiece was Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, called Munro of Novar, a close friend and patron of J.M.W. Turner who also owned Tiepolo's Martyrdom of St. Agatha (circa 1755), now in Berlin's Gemäldegalerie. Both Tiepolos were sold by Munro's heirs in 1878 and purchased by Galerie Sedelmeyer, and both later entered the collection of Sir Joseph Robinson, South African gold and diamond magnate and politician.

Robinson purchased Dudley House in London in 1894 and began collecting to fill his 80-foot picture gallery. The present lot was one of his earliest acquisitions. He remained in England during the Boer War (1899 - 1902) after his negotiations with his friend Paul Kruger, president of the Boer Republic, failed to prevent conflict. In 1908, Edward VII made Robinson a baronet in honor of his support of the cause of South African self-government. In 1910, he returned to his home country for good, and in London in 1923 he would place at auction 116 paintings. However, as Ellis Waterhouse recounted, when Robinson saw his paintings hung for the sale, he fell back in love with his own collection and deeply regretted his decision, so much so that he set prohibitive reserves on this and many of his paintings in order to buy them back. The Tiepolo and much of the collection passed to Robinson's daughter, Ida Louise, who married Conte Natale Labia, Italian Minister Plenipotentiary to the Union of South Africa (d. 1936), and remained in the family until their two sons sold some of the paintings, including this one, in 1989.

Banho Turco Feminino (A Female Turkish Bath or Hammam) - Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier

Banho Turco Feminino (A Female Turkish Bath or Hammam) - Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier
Coleção privada
OST - 84x130 - 1785

This remarkable and perfectly-preserved picture, which anticipates by several decades the taste for Orientalist paintings in Western Europe, was painted to provide the design for an engraved plate to Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohsson's Tableau Général de l'Empire Othoman. Through this work, published over many years in both folio and octavo editions, the enigmatic Baron D'Ohsson became a hugely influential figure in our understanding and appreciation of the culture of the Ottoman Empire, and a driving force in the upsurge of European interest in all things Turkish, which peaked well into the following century.  In the insatiable curiosity and the passion for encyclopaedic detail that permeates his published works he epitomised the spirit of enquiry of the Enlightenment. The present painting descended in his family until 2007.

Baron d'Ohsson was born into a French-Armenian family in Constantinople in 1740. From around 1760 he was employed as a Dragoman (a traditional post of interpreter and intermediary) at the Swedish Legation in Constantinople, and in 1775 he became personal and confidential secretary there to the Swedish King Gustav III. Gustav employed him to spy on his minister, Ulric von Celsing, and in 1780 ennobled him as Baron d'Ohsson. D'Ohsson was an influential figure in Ottoman public life and at the Sultan's court. He was a reformer by instinct, and invited by the Sultan Selim III to propose reforms of the Ottoman administration. He was also a successful entrepreneur, importing weaponry and ironmongery from Swedish foundries, gunpowder from Holland and grain from Salonika. Following his widowhood in 1782, but more likely because of the wealth of material that he had gathered for publication, d'Ohsson took leave in 1784 and went to Paris, where he published the first two volumes of his Tableau Général de l'Empire Othoman, in 1787 and 1789. After four years, however, after witnessing the storming of the Bastille, and following disagreements with his publishers, he went to Vienna. In 1792 he returned to Constantinople, where he resumed his diplomatic career, becoming Counsellor under the Swedish minister Pehr Olof von Asp. From 1795 to 1799 he held the office of Minister Plenipotentiary and was Head of the Swedish Legation in Constantinople, where he also represented the interests of the United States of America and Portugal.

The monumental folio volumes of his Tableau Général de l'Empire Othoman describe the daily life, mores and legal system of the Ottoman Empire, lavishly illustrated with engravings after designs by the leading artists of the day in France. They were not only hugely popular in Europe, but were greeted with rapture by Selim III, and because of their taxonomic cataloguing of Ottoman life, gave credence to their author's subsequent prescriptions for improvements, for example the establishment of the Military Officer's Technical School. Despite this, he fell out of favor with the Sublime Porte, and following the decline in Swedish influence after the murder of Gustav III, in 1799 he was expelled from Constantinople.

The plates illustrating the text of the Tableau Général were done under the supervision of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, (some plates are inscribed Cochin direxit) until 1787, when he and the author had a major falling-out, by which time the first two volumes were largely complete. D'Ohsson claimed to have assembled original illustrations by European and Greek painters (and a few Muslim artists) for his plates, writing in 1784 that he was awaiting 42 more paintings to be shipped from Constantinople. By paintings he may well have meant illustrations in watercolor or bodycolor on paper. Some at least are based on designs by Jean-Baptiste Hilaire, who spent some time in Turkey in 1776-7 working for the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, and who thus had direct experience of Turkish life. Some of the plates in the Tableau Général that are credited to Hilaire, had however to be re-drawn by Le Barbier to make them easier to engrave. Plate 167 in the Tableau Général, depicting the Sultan's Bath, is based directly on a detailed preparatory watercolor drawing by Le Barbier, in which the figures are stiff and elongated, suggesting that it was in turn closely based on one of the drawings done by a local artist and shipped to Paris.

The present painting served as the basis for Plate 13 in the first volume, and was engraved in the same sense by Robert DeLaunay le Jeune, and inscribed Le Barbier pinx.  The painting predates the publication of the first volume of the Tableau Général by two years, but the numbering along the bottom and right edges clearly shows that its design was intended to be transferred to an engraving. The architectural details are, given the exigencies of perspective, entirely accurate, but in contrast to Le Barbier's drawing for the comparable subject of plate 167, the composition is far more naturalistic and the figures appear more European, which suggests that the design was not based on a locally made drawing. The woman on the left holding the small tray with henna in her hands, and the child next to her, are very similar to a pastel by Jean-Etienne Liotard, which Le Barbier may well have known.

The plate is entitled: BAIN PUBLIC des femmes Mahomédanées (The Public Bath of Muslim Women) and illustrates a point made in d'Ohsson's text about ritual public cleanliness, and specifically the occasions that demand a complete washing of the body. Based on direct personal experience, he emphasized the decorum that prevailed in hammams as well as the pleasures of bathing and relaxing in the company of fellow women. The plate directly illustrates d'Ohsson's lengthy but informative account of the public hammam:

"Every city, town, village, however insignificant, has its public baths, Hammam... they are constantly heated: each sex has its own; there are also ones in common..., the day for women, the night for men... One never enters except naked, the body simply covered by a towel, Peschtumal, from breast to feet; it is of silk, linen, or cotton, always red or blue; on the feet one wears high clogs, Nalinn, because the heat of the pavement does not permit walking on it barefooted..."

"Women avail themselves of the services of the bath attendants..., These Telaks, as they are called, are singularly skilled at dressing the hair, washing the body, and rubbing the skin, from shoulders to feet; they use a bath mitt of serge, along with the lather of perfumed soap; they also use [Fuller's Earth], Kil, mixed with rose petals, to remove the oil from the hair. Since all Muslim women...depilate themselves, this too being a matter of religious principle, they also use a very fine caustic clay".

"Many women who have pains have themselves massaged by a matron..., especially those who have recently given birth. This procedure, often quite painful, usually occurs on a raised platform in the middle of the bath. Moreover, everything occurs in the greatest decency; every woman keeps on the towel in which she is wrapped; the bath attendants pass the hands under the towel to rub the stomach, the thighs and the legs. When one has finished bathing, one changes into a fine, clean chemise; the attendants also cover the shoulders with a cloth and the head with a white kerchief; one then passes into the antichamber of the bath, Djeamékeann..."

"There one experiences a calm and a well being difficult to describe; it is a sort of regeneration, its calm heightened by refreshing beverages, especially an exquisite coffee".

A modern account of a Turkish hammam would hardly differ.