All the highlights of the auction have been sold and two world records have been achieved: the first one is a ‘Naturalist Painting’ by Adolfo Tommasi, Petriolo presso Firenze (Petriolo near Florence), one of the principle Tuscan naturalist painters of the late nineteenth century, Dating back to 1884-85, is among Tommasi’s best works, a clear, solid and detailed representation of reality through the eyes of the Tuscan artist.
This oil on canvas was presented in 1885 at the Florence Annual Fine Arts Exposition. The following year it was shown in Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan and in 1888, at the National Fine Arts Exposition in Bologna. The journey by train – to Petriolo, a village on the outskirts of Florence in this case – is a subject Tommasi particularly loved and addressed often in his career by Tommasi, The price achieved is € 300.750.
The second record has been set by Carlo Ferrari, called Ferrarin, A View of Piazza delle Erbe in Verona.
The Piazza delle Erbe – centre of economic and political life in Verona – was a constant source of inspiration for Ferrarin, so much that starting from 1839 he presented more diverse views of the square.
Probably this painting was commissioned by an Austrian. This is suggested both by a label on the back of the painting and by the fact that Ferrarin enjoyed considerable trading fortune, and not only with the local aristocracy; among his most important admirers and buyers were Field Marshall Radetzky and Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph who visited his studio in 1851.
High prices were realised for the Veduta del cortile dell’Imperial Regio Palazzo del Governo a Milano (Veduta of the courtyard of the Imperial Royal Palace in Milan) by Giovanni Migliara. It is a magnificent example of ‘Veduta Urbana’ (‘Urban View’), a successful typology developed by the Piedmontese painter, in which the veduta with architecture is “married” to the genre painting and animated with small but well-defined characters.
