MILAN.- For the first time in a Milanese sale on an international level, most of the lots are accompanied by export licence. It’s therefore an important news for the art market in Italy and abroad.

Sotheby’s Milan will host this event and Filippo Lotti – Sotheby’s Italy managing director -comments: "After a few seasons devoted exclusively to Contemporary Art in Italy, Milan expands again its business thanks to a refined Milanese Private Collection, mostly dedicated to the 17th-18th Century with museum-quality paintings, a selection of Venetian, Roman, Florentine and Genoese furniture, a nucleus of high-quality Works of Art in bronze and terracotta, and a small group of precious corals”.

The sale combines a private collector’s unique taste for interior furnishing with the passion for Wunderkammer It is a collection that includes about 80 lots, in which the section of Sculptures and Works of Art represents all the finest techniques that cross the artistic styles from Renaissance to Neoclassicism.

An example of the high quality of the sale is the Roman 17th-18th Century carved and giltwood console with a jasper of Sicily veneered top ( Est. 20,000-30,000 EUR) and the pair of commesso in pietre dure plaques, with ebony and gilt-bronze mounts, each depicting a landscape (Est. 15,000-25,000 EUR).

Formerly in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk, the commesso in pietre dure, ebony and gilt-bronze mounts casket executed by Botteghe Granducali in Florence, between 1680 and 1720. This precious art object has an estimate of 40,000-60,000 EUR.

The Baroque is beautifully represented by the high bronze inkwell made by the Nicola Roccatagliata workshop, 17th Century, surmounted by the allegorical figure of Fame between two Cupids (Est. 12.000-18.000 EUR).

Among the terracotta sculptures of the collection, the magnificent group of Bacchus and Venus (h. 50cm approx) signed by Giovanni Baratta in early 18th Century valuated 40.000-60.000 EUR.

The famous Roman sculptor Francesco Righetti plays with the great celebrity of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini in the bronze (h.40cm) formerly coming from Betterton House, Oxfordshire, and published in The Loyd Collection of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1991; the bronze has a valuation from 30,000-50,000 EUR.

The Milanese Cabinet-Collection contains also a group of precious Corals, among which excels the 17th Century Casket, in coral and silver (Est. 80,000-120,000 EUR) and two real painted Neapolitan waxes by Francesco Pieri (1699-1773).

It can’t be missed in an accurate collection a table clock; and here, we point out the carved and gilt wood table clock, dated 1770 and inscribed: Antoine Vasquet a fils/orologer du prints du Carignan/Racconigi (h. 56cm; Est 15,000-25,000 EUR)
For brevity, in this draft press release firstly describing the collection, we mention - in the section dedicated to Eastern Art - the Chinese seated Figure of Guanyin in gilded bronze, dating back to the Ming dynasty, wearing a long dress open on his chest that reveals an elaborate necklace (Est. 40,000 - 60,000 EUR).

Furthermore the collection offers Italian and European 18th century paintings focusing on some of the most renowned muster of the Ritrattistica from Fra’ Galgario to Giovanni Battista Lampi il Vecchio and Rosalba Carriera, the most famous Venetian portraitist of her time.

By the great portrait - painter from Bergamo, the Portrait of a Gentleman included in the well-known 1967 Bergamo exhibition dedicated to the Works by Fra’ Galgario in the Bergamo private collections has an estimate of 30.000 – 40.000 EUR.

Published in the 1988 and 2007 catalogues dedicated to Rosalba Carriera - the Portrait of a Gentlewoman (est. 30,000-50,000 EUR) is accompanied by the Portrait of a Gentleman, again by Carriera, offered in 1973 at Sotheby's London and today at auction in Milan, with a valuation of 50,000-70,000 EUR.

Included in the catalogue of the beautiful 2001 Trento exhibition Un ritrattista nell’Europa delle Corti. Giovanni Battista Lampi 1751-1830 curated by Fernando Mazzocca, the spectacular Portrait of Gentleman in Red (Martin Knoller?), by Giovanni Battista Lampi il Vecchio, the highly appreciated portrait painter of the eighteenth Century European aristocracy (Est. 20,000-30,000 EUR).