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Portrait of Helena Fourment, Ruben's 2nd Wife - Flemish Old Master oil painting

Circa 1700

This superb religious figurative oil painting is by noted artist Wilfred de Glehn. Although some experts rank de Glehn alongside Sargent, he is considered as something of a late British Renoir, for his deft use of sunlight and shadow. Indeed he was good friends with John Singer Sargent and collaborated with his on some projects. This painting, painted circa 1910 is of three saints, from left to right they are Saint Jerome, Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian. It is based on a work attributed to 16th century artist Alessandro Oliverio. Saint Jerome was a biblical translator and monastic leader and is depicted in red, holding books. Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian were known as the Plague saints - Plague saints offered hope and healing before, during, and after times of plague. A specific style of painting, the plague votive, was considered a talisman for warding off the plague. It portrayed a particular saint as an intercessor between God and the person or persons who commissioned the painting – usually a town, government, lay confraternity, or religious order to atone for the "collective guilt" of the community. Rather than a society depressed and resigned to repeated epidemics, these votives represent people taking positive steps to regain control over their environment. Paintings of Roch represent the confidence in which renaissance worshipers sought to access supernatural aid in overcoming the ravages of the plague. The thirteenth-century Saint Roch (or Rocco), whose death is still commemorated in Italy, is especially invoked against the plague. He attended plague victims in public hospitals in Italy according to traditional accounts of his life. Images attributed to the Spanish historical painter Nicolás Borrás in the Royal Cornwall Museum, or other works in institutions from The National Gallery to the Wallace Collection, show him baring his thigh to show the mark of the plague, as he is in this painting. Saint Roch is also the patron saint of dogs, after one carried food to him in the prison where he died...

This lovely Italian Old Master portrait oil painting is by Domenico Maria Sani. Painted circa 1732 the sitter is of Maria Anna Vittoria (1718 - 1788), daughter of Philip V and Elisabetta Farnese, who in 1729 married Joseph prince of Brazil and king of Portugal...

CHRISTOFFEL LUBIENIECKI (1659-1729) Pair of portraits of a gentleman and a lady, both in silk kimono, before a country house (circa 1680) Indistinctly signed “C.......” on a box under the man’s left hand Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 67 cm each Both sitters are portrayed wearing a silk “Japanese” coat. During the second half of the seventeenth the Japanese silk coat, an adapted Japanese kimono, became a real vogue in the Dutch elite. The exclusive Dutch trade contacts with Japan can explain the popularity of the kimono-style silk coats in the Netherlands. Everybody who could afford one, dressed in such a fashionable and comfortable coat and, like the present sitters, some proud owners had themselves portrayed in a “Japanese” coat often together with an oriental carpet to underline their standing and international connections. These portraits are the work of the Polish-born portraitist Christoffel Lubieniecki (also known as Lubienitski, Lubinitski or Lubiniecki) Lubieniecki was first trained in Hamburg under Julian Stuhr and after 1675 in Amsterdam under Adriaen Backer and Gerard de Lairesse. He specialized in landscapes, generally of an Italianate character, and in portraits. The loving execution of these contented burghers, enjoying the garden vistas of their country house, places him alongside Amsterdam portraitists such as Constantijn Netscher and Michiel van Musscher...

Genoese school of the second half of the seventeenth century Circle of Domenico Piola (Genoa 1627-1703) The Holy Family Oil painting on canvas 83 x 68 cm. - in an antique frame 99 x...