The Milanese painter, a well-known artist at the court of Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, owes his fame above all to his surprising “compound heads” and “reversible images”, of which this tablet is one of the most important testimonies. The Ortolano depicts a cup full of vegetables of various types which, when rotated 180 °, transforms into a bizarre and plump face with a common tone. The work, of evident Nordic character, shows close links with the world of alchemy and Phytognomics by Giovan Battista Della Porta, according to which plants have the property of treating and healing the disorders of the organs and parts of the body that present their same shapes or silhouettes.

The scene alludes to a passage from Bonaventura da Bagnoregio's Legenda maior in which it is told of how Francis, who returned to Monte della Verna in 1224, and opened the Gospel three times at random, always to the story of the Passion, meditates on his ultimate destiny of total conformity to the martyrdom of Christ which will later lead to the stigmata, which are actually still missing here.

The profound interiorization of the revelation, emphasized by the presence of the crucifix which seems to stop the pages of the Gospel, reveals in the Cremonese painting some autobiographical implications in relation to the personal events of the painter. Caravaggio, in fact, following the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni (May 28, 1606) was subject to an obsessive desire for expiation.

The recent hypotheses regarding the commissioning of the painting by Monsignor Benedetto Ala, from Cremona, governor of Rome from 1604 to 1610, and on several occasions protector of Caravaggio, are being confirmed, by means of whom he perhaps hoped to obtain the revocation of the ban. capital.

To support this thesis is the face of the saint in which the painter's features can be easily recognized. The hypothesis that, through this painting, he had wanted to entrust his patron with a sort of confession of his state of mind and of his resignation for a future that foreshadowed uncertain and with little hope, therefore becomes more and more suggestive.

The construction of the wardrobe was commissioned to Platina in 1477. Formed by an elongated structure, mirrored by a central pilaster, the front consists of three superimposed rows of ten antelle each, three figured with the announced Madonna, the announcing Angel, San Girolamo (plus a lost one now replaced by a Sant'Omobono by Vincenzo Canuti performed in 2007), twelve with perspective views of Cremona, Mantua, Padua and ideal cities, the remaining fourteen with musical and liturgical instruments, fruit bowls, still lifes. Characterized by a strong perspective system, the various antelle alternate the vision of deep urban spatial systems with the effect of an inverted telescope with which the inlays with still lifes are built, with fake doors and jutting furnishings. According to sources, Giovanni Maria Platina was born in Mantua in 1455 and died there in 1500; it is therefore not surprising to find two famous views of the city of the Gonzagas, although it is difficult to verify a precise correspondence between the wooden mirror and the real topography of the places. Apart from some simplifications made by the artist, the two antelle show Platina's direct knowledge of the Mantuan urban topography and are a rare figurative testimony of these in the fifteenth century.

The author addresses the Dante theme of the end of Ugolino della Gherardesca and his boys imprisoned in the tower of Pisa. He titled small and large formats, grouping them in two narrative variants: one in which the protagonist shows to welcome the disaster with heroic resignation, and one literally illustrative of the verse "both hands for pain bites me". The one exhibited in Cremona is one of the versions of the first iconographic group, next to the canvas that Diotti painted for Count Paolo Tosio (now in the Civic Museums of Brescia) and which he exhibited at the Brera Academy, enjoying widespread critical appreciation. He departs from it for a simpler study of light and a greater pathetic charge of all the actors. In particular for the head of the protagonist, with a long beard with a shocked expression.

The altarpiece, intended for the altar of the Pesci family, was placed in an altarpiece that included four other squares, now dispersed, depicting the life of the saint. Malossus in this painting captures the moment that immediately precedes the beheading of the Baptist, who turns his gaze upwards, where an angel appears, boldly represented in foreshortening, showing him the crowns and holding the palm of martyrdom. The pathos is accentuated by the dark space, illuminated only by a glimpse of divine light, a torch and a lantern. The work, therefore, fits fully into the tradition of the nocturnal setting, which has in Antonio Campi its most illustrious representative from Cremona and an essential model for Caravaggio.

The painting was made in 1642 for the church of San Lorenzo and is part, together with other paintings commissioned for the same abbey by the Olivetan monks, of the first public undertaking entrusted to the artist in the city. The birth of the virgin is illustrated according to the story of the apocryphal gospels. The scene shows in the foreground the large basin ready for the baby girl's bath, behind her the maid waiting to dry the baby. On the right a second maid spreads a cloth in front of the fire and in the background, in the shade, Anna rests in bed while on the left Joachim peeps out.

The sacred event is enriched by details of everyday life, almost domestic; in this canvas the Miradori just transferred to Cremona proves to be able to update the most intimately Genoese elements of his training thanks to a look at the natural one closest to Lombard painting.

The painting was born as an altarpiece of San Giovanni Battista in the church of San Mattia, at the behest of the Consorzio della Donna. The figure of the Baptist, in profile at the center of the scene and on a rise, takes on a particular iconic value and becomes the focal point with respect to the multitude gathered all around. Among the bystanders, the figure from behind with the red cloak and the man with a turban stand out in the foreground, who seems to invite the observer into the scene: both owe a lot to the Campesca culture and in particular to Antonio, of whom Ghidoni is a pupil.

The Portrait shows Giovanni Beltrami (1770-1854) in the moment of maximum working success as an engraver of cameos and precious stones, in the act of showing an example of his production: a tondo with carved profiles that constituted the most commercial part of his production. Giovanni Beltrami in this portrait conveys confidence and awareness of the results achieved. The work expresses a perfect understanding between the painter and his authoritative model, a point of reference for a generation of artists and for Carnovali himself. The face that appears in the portrait, marked by the years, gives the impression of a man in his sixties. The effect of surprising truth achieved by the Piccio, who fixes and almost nervously chisels with the brush the family physiognomy of his famous friend, coexists with a decidedly celebratory tone.

In this painting, the four-year-old brother is portrayed, presented in the company of a large dog and in the act of holding up a sheet of paper with words inspired by paternal affection (Father who in forming me took part, take me hor reformed by art).

Third son of Count Niccolò who had to prefer him, Sigismondo was undoubtedly the most brilliant of the Ponzone brothers: passionate about music, versed in fencing, he married a Gonzaga and, on the premature death of his second-born brother Federico, inherited the title of count and the heritage of the Ponzoni . At the beginning of the eighteenth century, through the marriage of Sigismondo's daughter, Beatrice, to Giovan Francesco Ala, the Ponzone counts merge with the Ala marquises, who obtain the double surname and add the title of counts to their own.

It is one of the works that best represents the attention paid by the youngest descendant of the Campesca dynasty to the painting of reality. In this painting he describes the details of the everyday life of the peasant. The painting depicts the move that the laborers were forced to carry out from one farmhouse to another due to the expiration of their contract. This custom, linked to the feast of San Martino, celebrated on November 11th, despite being rooted up to the middle of the last century in the countryside of the Po valley, constitutes an iconographic subject that is unprecedented in other sixteenth-century Italian and foreign works.

The city is seen from the Piacenza bank of the Po in all its development from west to east so that its main monuments are highlighted. In particular you can see, from the left: the bell tower and the pediment of the facade of Sant'Agostino, the church of Santa Lucia with its ancient tower, the bulk of the Jesuit college with the church and bell tower of San Marcellino, the tower of San Domenico, the convent with church and bell tower of San Pietro al Po, the towers of the Palazzo del Comune, the Torrazzo and the cathedral, and finally, more isolated on the right, the bell tower of San Michele, the romantic tower of Palazzo Mina Bolzesi and two bell towers of Sant'Imerio and della Maddalena. The view in question must have risen to great notoriety because there are several more or less varied versions of it.