Vincenzo Cabianca | Macchiaioli painter

Vincenzo Cabianca (1827-1902) was an Italian painter of the Macchiaioli group.

He was born in Verona in modest circumstances. He began his artistic training at the Verona Academy under Giovanni Caliari, and then studied at the Venice Academy from 1845-1847.

An admirer of Giuseppe Mazzini, he became associated with the Young Italy movement and was taken prisoner while participating in the defense of Bologna in 1848.

After his release he lived in Venice from 1849-1853.

Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897

"Spring in the Alps" was created in 1897 by Italian Divisionism / Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899).

The painting is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

"Spring in the Alps" depicts a panoramic alpine landscape near the village of Soglio - visible on the right with its recognizable church tower - in Val Bregaglia in southwestern Switzerland.

Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897 | J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Claude Monet | Valley of the Petite Creuse, 1889

The striking effects of Monet’s several paintings of the Creuse Valley in central France are achieved through complex, superimposed layers of color, as he combined bold brushstrokes with intricate passages made up of many small touches.

Title: Valley of the Petite Creuse

Author: Claude Monet (French painter, 1840-1926)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 65.4 x 81.3 cm (25 3/4 x 32 in.)

Current location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Georges Girardot | Le reverences de la lune, 1890

Georges Marie Julien Girardot (1856-1914) was a French figure, landscape and marine painter.

Girardot was born in Besançon, Doubs on 4 August 1856.

He was trained by the artist Albert Maignan in Paris.

Girardot was active in Paris, painting mostly genre paintings, female nudes and landscapes.

William Bouguereau | Joueur de flûte, 1878

In his accounts, Bouguereau gave a title of Tête d’enfant avec une flûte to the present work, yet the instrument depicted more closely resembles a piffero, an Italian folk instrument related to the modern oboe, which was used by the musical troupes who would descend from the hills around Rome to celebrate Christmas.

Both the music and the sweet expression of Bouguereau’s young musician likely evoked the artist’s happy memories of travel to Italy in the late 1840s.

Bouguereau had painted young musicians as early as 1870 in works like Pifferaro (Bartoli, no. 1870/80, and sold in these rooms April 18, 2007, lot 90).

Ludovico Carracci | The penitent Saint Peter, 1613

Although mentioned by Ludovico's earliest biographer Malvasia as early as 1678, all trace of this monumental and imposing image of repentance was lost until its rediscovery only thirty years ago.

Malvasia recorded how Ludovico had given to Count Camillo Bolognetti, a nobleman and occasional amateur painter in the Carracci workshop, 'la figura intera di quel S. Pietro piangente, così risentito e terribile'.

In a handwritten note included in the 1841 edition of his Felsina pittrice the picture is referred to as 'San Pietro piangente l'aversi negato discepolo di Cristo, figura sedente, meno del naturale'.

Hermann Krüger | Park near Rome, 1899

"Park near Rome" (View of the Alban Hills) is an 1899 oil painting by German landscape painter of the Düsseldorf School Hermann August Krüger (1834-1908).

After initially studying art in Munich, Hermann Krüger continued his education in Düsseldorf from 1867 onwards, having spent time in Dresden and Berlin in between.

There, Kruger was a private pupil of Oswald Achenbach and undertook numerous study trips to Italy and Egypt.