The work consists of a painted and gilded wooden case that contains a sculpture of the guardian angel in the act of protecting a child. The object constitutes a domestic altar whose presence in the Marche houses was very frequent.

The work of local production of the second half of the century. XVIII has the advantage of having been preserved in its formal entirety and of constituting an example of high artistic craftsmanship in which elements of plastic processing are associated with others of more marked cabinet-making interest. The level reached by the local workshops on the carving and modeling front is well documented by the elegance of the case which presents decorative elements in relief of different formal qualifications with a scrolling development in the coping and a ribbon in the uprights with the motif of the inverted pine cone and of the acorn-shaped tassel. The same refined elegance manifests the angel figurine.

The work is an ancient replica of the similar painting by Guercino today preserved in England at Corsham Court. The canvas, of excellent quality, deals with a fairly widespread devotional subject in the climate of the late Counter-Reformation aimed at soliciting meditation on the theme of passion purged of excesses of patheticism. The cultural side is the classicist one of the Bolognese school of the second half of the century.

In the Jesi painting the concentration of the compositional elements is supported by the strongly contrasted use of the luminous elements, today not fully revealed, which enhance the brightness of the very white flesh of the child emerging from a dark and dramatic backdrop. While the light in the foreground cuts the main figure transversely from above, an auroral light strikes the background landscape and defines the contours of the turreted city overlooking a stretch of water that reverberates its reddish glow.

On the left of the painting an unusual representation of the terrestrial globe clarifies the theological assumption of the image, aimed at suggesting the regenerating effect of the two sacramental actions of the Passion, to which the cross and the nails allude, and of Baptism overshadowed by the river course in the background.

The Child, with an intense and meditative expression, appears triumphant in the exhibition of the instruments of the Passion and softens their emotional impact with a candid and plump physicality.

The painting presented here belongs to the moment of greatest notoriety of Amorosi who, having left Giuseppe Ghezzi's workshop in Rome to walk on his own legs, becomes a point of reference in the capital for those who wish to enrich their gallery with curious and unusual subjects. . In fact, Antonio Mercurio Amorosi, originally from the Marche region, did not take long to realize that he had a particular predisposition for genre scenes, the Bambocciate as they were defined, not without contempt, by those who asked only tall and deep subjects from painting. In contrast to the representation of religious themes, of ancient history and even of mythology, the bamboccianti chose for their paintings miserable protagonists, caught in the gestures of a poor and mean everyday life with sordid and cramped environments as a background. They aroused the curiosity and attracted the attention of rich and cultured people, fascinated by the alien world of poverty and begging.

The painting presented here belongs to the moment of greatest notoriety of Amorosi who, having left Giuseppe Ghezzi's workshop in Rome to walk on his own legs, becomes a point of reference in the capital for those who wish to enrich their gallery with curious and unusual subjects. . In fact, Antonio Mercurio Amorosi, originally from the Marche region, did not take long to realize that he had a particular predisposition for genre scenes, the Bambocciate as they were defined, not without contempt, by those who asked only tall and deep subjects from painting. In contrast to the representation of religious themes, of ancient history and even of mythology, the bamboccianti chose for their paintings miserable protagonists, caught in the gestures of a poor and mean everyday life with sordid and cramped environments as a background. They aroused the curiosity and attracted the attention of rich and cultured people, fascinated by the alien world of poverty and begging.

The allegory of the Five Senses turns out to be one of the favorite themes of Carlo Cignani, the most famous pupil of Francesco Albani and the greatest representative of the classicist current that runs through the Bolognese artistic story of the 2nd half of the century. XVII.

Surrounded by the esteem of the intellectuals of his time, who considered him the only true heir of Correggio, he was the head of a thriving shop first in Bologna and then in Forlì where he moved permanently in 1685.

The work is a workshop replica of the prototype made by Carlo Cignani for Cardinal Lazzaro Pallavicini at the end of the century. XVII.

In the version represented here, Charity is depicted as a mother surrounded by her 5 children, each called to impersonate the allegory of hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste with perceptive immediacy due to the presence of a few, significant narrative elements: the bell, the bouquet of flowers, the infant at the mother's breast, a mirror, a caress.

The altarpiece, the subject of some restoration work after its acquisition, still has the original arched frame decorated with imitation marble and equipped with a double system of capitals. The predella has a decorative grotesque motif framing a central cartouche with the dedicatory inscription (now illegible). In the side panels appear the allegory of Faith and Charity in the form of fake sculptures inserted in a marble aedicule with a shell-like crown.

Raffaellino del Colle, a pupil of Raffaello Sanzio, is the author of this altarpiece. At the top is depicted the transport of the Holy House of Loreto: very particular is the way in which the artist depicts the clouds and the body of the little angels, a typical expression of the current to which he belonged, that of Mannerism. In the foreground San Giacomo and San Filippo and in the background a fantastic landscape. This painting was commissioned by a noble family for a church located in Jesi.

The work, cut on all 4 sides, turns out to be a fragment of a larger canvas of which we do not know the subject, nor the reasons for the reduction. The current dimensions of the work and its partial nature require a certain caution in order to attribute it to the great artist from Cento, to whom it refers more than one stylistic element. In particular, the work presents the expressive and pictorial characteristics of Guercino's first manner.

The artist is basically a self-taught person supported by an extraordinary natural talent and a spontaneism which is supported by an acute sense of observation and the discipline of drawing. All characteristics that we find in the fragment from Jesi that expresses a pictorial ductus of great value with thin and nervous brushstrokes, with the light that reveals the thickened grain of the skin, the turgor of the veins of the head, the woolly density of the beard and hair; while on the contrary the dense shadow emphasizes the sharp line of the cheeks, suggests the volumetric encumbrance of the shoulders, pushes the figure forward and constructs it plastically by contrast.

As is well known, Giorgio Vasari was the first art historian, remembered above all as the author of the lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects in which he traces the profile of Italian artists from the Middle Ages to Michelangelo, considered the apex of everyone's art. times. The Lives had to change the literature of the sector forever and start the history of art as we understand it today.

As a painter Vasari is the leading exponent of Tuscan Mannerism of the mid-1500s in which grace is the aesthetic ideal of reference, a masterful blend of naturalistic verisimilitude and intellectual quality of beauty.

The picture presented here shows all the elements of Mannerist and Vasari compositional syntax in particular: diagonal cuts, shortened figures, anatomical elongations, acid colors. The figures taken from the half-length become habitual, trespassing into the spectator's space and appearing at the margins of the pictorial space. They are mechanisms of involvement that are enriched with direction solutions aimed at provoking the direct involvement of the spectator. The dramatic action develops through the very close shot, the attention to detail, the contrast between the dignity of Christ and the shame of the cross, the suffering face and the elegance of the pink robe.

Despite his Abruzzese birth, Nino Caffé is in effect a painter from the Marches, trained first in Ancona and from 1930 in Pesaro. Student in Urbino, where he graduated in 1935 and where he later became a teacher at the local Academy.

In the picture from Jesi, echoes of the French fin de siecle school and of the softness of Boldini, undisputed master of the portrait genre, reach peaks of absolute virtuosity in the representation of female figures.

On this line, Nino Caffè contrasts the modest gestures of the woman with the sensuality of the white bare shoulders which in fact become the significant center of the composition. The seated young woman is portrayed in an evening dress, with a flower in her hair gathered in a soft bun. A quick painting, with large brushstrokes, defines the dress, while in the complexion and hairstyle the sign becomes more meticulous and detailed. In her right hand, resting on her lap, the woman exposes a closed, red-colored fan that is easy to interpret, alluding to a femininity not yet fully expressed, but about to unfold. On the other hand, the erotic figure seems to be the most suitable to offer interpretative keys to the painting.

The panel has recently undergone a restoration, which has allowed the original color to be brought to light, revealing the work of a refined artist, capable of wisely using pigments to create precious effects of brightness and brilliance, especially in the rendering. of the complexions.

This Annunciation, as recalled by the inscription, is a copy of a miraculous fresco found in the basilica of SS. Annunziata of Florence. According to tradition, the fresco was painted around the middle of the 13th century by a painter called Bartolomeo, with the exception of the face of the Virgin, made by an angel. The current image, however, dates back to the 14th century. The great devotion paid to the Florentine Annunciation led to its rapid and conspicuous diffusion, as evidenced by the numerous replicas performed by both known and unknown authors in the churches of Florence and its surroundings, up to the other side of the Alps. There were also many devotional reproductions for the faithful, prints, ex voto, woodcuts, which involved a widespread transmission. The artist, therefore, knew very well the iconographic model of reference, to which he remains extremely faithful, except for the posture of the Angel. Unlike the original, the Angel has not yet kneeled in front of the Virgin, being caught in the immediately preceding moment, bending his knees in mid-air gliding without touching the ground. Particularly suited to give movement and greater physicality to the figure, which, thanks to the drapery of the dress against which the knees press, and the shadow projected on the floor, presents itself in all its bursting corporeity.

The author of the painting is Francesco da Ponte, from Bassano del Grappa near Venice, who lived and worked in Veneto in the 16th century. The painting is a rare example of a 16th century nocturnal and is totally based on the contrast between light and shadow. It represents an interior with women who are carrying out typically feminine crafts (cooking, spinning, embroidery ...) and a boy who feeds the fire in the foreground. It is believed that it most likely belongs to a series depicting the four seasons, of which it symbolizes winter. The night light inside the painting allows an accurate study of light and colors. On the left side of the background there are two people, while on the right side, in an unreal landscape, a man is praying to Heaven and in the dark sky a celestial light comes on and shows a child.

Giovanni Fazi is one of the most significant artists from Jesi of the nineteenth century, trained in Rome at the Academy of S. Luca. From 1880 he was a teacher at the Technical Institute of Jesi playing an important role in defining the artistic choices and tastes of the city and in the training of young talents. The painting depicts the portrait of a young woman in a peasant dress, with the typical headdress of the Marche tradition: the handkerchief folded over her head and fastened with pins; widespread also in Lazio and Campania, in fact the artist lived for a long time also in these areas.