Owen Jones, author of Grammar of Ornaments, published in London in 1856, dedicated two volumes of his work Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra, printed between 1842 and 1845, to the Alhambra in Granada, highlighting how the architecture of this building represented a model of universal stylistic perfection. This model became one of the main references for the taste for exoticism, as evidenced by the numerous open-air theatres that sprang up in Italy at the end of the 19th century, which were named Alhambra. Among these, we must mention the one in Florence, inaugurated in 1889 but subsequently renovated to a design by Adolfo Coppedè. The drawing depicts the Alhambra Theatre in Florence.

Inspired by his fundamental experience in Siam – where he stayed from 1911 to 1913, called by King Rama VI to create the pictorial decorations for the Throne Palace, designed by architects Annibale Rigotti and Mario Tamagno – gave rise to the impressive decorative apparatus of the Berzieri Thermal Baths in Salsomaggiore, inaugurated in 1923 and designed by architect Ugo Giusti. In the decorative elements of Chini's flower boxes, stylised geometric motifs of Secessionist origin are integrated with iconographic themes of Eastern derivation: such as the lion's head, already reproduced in the famous painting Ultimo giorno dell'anno cinese a Bangkok (Last Day of the Chinese Year in Bangkok, 1912) and then replicated on the façade and decoration of the bar counter of the Tamerici Establishment in Montecatini and on the façade of the Berzieri Thermal Baths themselves Vase with geometric and decorative motifs.

The two panels represent two casts of the Triptych of Friendship, which was exhibited at the 18th Venice International Art Biennale in 1932 at the Exhibition of Aeropainting and Painting by Italian Futurists. Made of taiattite (an aluminium-based alloy invented by Thayaht himself), it also included an element entitled Singing Together. Bas-relief triptych with geometric male figures.

The large sculpture – characterised by classical stylistic and iconographic references, in line with the celebration of “Romanity” that marked Fascist propaganda – represents one of the studies of the plastic decorations that Scapolla created in 1938 for the decoration of a shrine to Fascist martyrs and heroes, to be built in Pavia to commemorate the return of the volunteers who had participated in the Spanish Civil War. The work depicts a half-length figure of a soldier with his arms raised above his head.

The artist, who was born and raised in Miami Beach, intended this sculpture to depict her childhood friend Micky as a “colossus”, moving from one part of the globe to another in search of works for his collection. For Colossus, a sculpture covered in wax, she was inspired by the artist Medardo Rosso, whose life and work run somewhat parallel to the period of Micky Wolfson's collection, which focuses on the decades between 1880 and 1950. Colossus, however, is a structurally modern work: a steel frame supports the armour, for a portrait that encompasses both body and soul.

Etching depicting boats steered by two men.

The end of the Napoleonic wars with the Treaty of Vienna also coincided with the cancellation of the Ligurian Republic and its annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Savoy were thus given an instrument, the maritime and port instrument, that the ruling house had been aiming for for centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the first projects that the Piedmontese dynasty promoted was to build a large navy in order to pursue a policy of maritime power. This task was facilitated by Napoleon's legacy which, particularly in Genoa and the Cantieri della Foce, had created the infrastructure and trained a staff of shipbuilders capable of designing and building large military ships. One example is the frigate San Michele, built in 1840 to the design of engineer Giacomo Biga. Having become obsolete, from 1862 it was used as a training ship until 1868, when it was transferred to La Spezia, where it was scrapped in 1875. Model of the hull and complete sail equipment of the Sardinian frigate 'San Michele'. Note the presence of the raised bridge - or “command bridge” as it was called at the time - located immediately in front of the mizzenmast.

The Republic of Genoa armed several galleys used for patrolling the coast until the early 1800s, when this type of ship had become obsolete, replaced by more efficient and armed vessels. The model reproduces one of these ‘late’ galleys. While the layout of the rowing benches – the ‘telaro’ – remains essentially unchanged, as do the stern and the bow spur, the stern has changed. The typical wheel is replaced by a straight rudder, which has lost its characteristic ‘scimitar’ shape in favour of a straight one, common to pinches and brigantines. The classic superstructure of the deck, known as the carriage, consisting of arched ribs covered with a canvas that could be lowered to the waterline, becomes integral with the hull, gaining solidity and the possibility of accommodating some artillery pieces, as demonstrated by the relative hatches: an extreme attempt to make a ship on the decline competitive. Large-scale ‘prototype’ model, made by the craftsmen of the Arsenale or perhaps by the Jesuit Fathers' carpentry school.

Trained at the Museo Artistico Industriale in Naples and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where he was a pupil of Cambellotti, in 1923 Giulio Rufa exhibited terracotta works together with Ferruccio Palazzi and Roberto Rosati in the Roman section at the First International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza. Active on several artistic fronts, he was particularly involved in ceramics, a field in which he collaborated with Ferruccio Palazzi. This vase with globular shape and everted rim, marked “Roma/Rufa” under the base, is typical of his early ceramic production. Glazed and painted earthenware vase with globular shape and everted rim, signed under the base.

A member of the artistic group formed around “The House,” a magazine of “aesthetics, decorum and government of the modern home” founded in 1908 by Edoardo De Fonseca, Duilio Cambellotti shared with the other exponents of the movement, including Vittorio Grassi and Umberto Bottazzi, the inspiration for the aesthetic models of the Arts & Crafts: especially in the reevaluation of traditional craft techniques-such as the abolition of the use of nails and assembly by joints-that made it possible to achieve, through a simplified constructive process, a rigorous and linear decoration. The common Ruskinian medievalist inspiration professed by this artistic cohort flowed into a collective propensity for the philological recovery of local traditions kept alive by minor crafts and an integration of art and architecture, declined through decorative inserts in ceramics and polychrome glass. Cambellotti's attraction to the suggestions of a medieval imagery - already evident in the table Medioevo, published in 1905 in the magazine “Novissima” and depicting a rugged hilly landscape dotted with ancient turreted manors, or in the silhouette of a medieval helmet with which he accompanied his signature until 1910 - intensified in particular through the literary mediation of Dante, as witnessed by his victorious participation in the competition announced by Vittorio Alinari for the illustrations of La Divina Commedia. If such suggestions also imprinted the precious inlays of the furniture of the Palazzo dell'Acquedotto Pugliese, characterized by depictions of villages crossed by watercourses that recalled the illuminated codices of the Middle Ages, this inspiration of his found its most accomplished inspiration in the stained glass windows, to the realization of which he began to devote himself together with Grassi and Bottazzi thanks to the collaboration with master glassmaker Cesare Picchiarini. Their exhibition debut in that sphere took place in 1912, on the occasion of the Exhibition of Stained Glass set up in Rome's Palazzo dei Filippini. Cambellotti exhibited three stained-glass windows-“Fourteenth-century Coat of Arms,” “Ravens,” and “Heroic Vision”-that, through the filter of contemporary aesthetics, showed a strong link with the expressive energy of a remote era. The glass technique represented for Cambellotti a coherent synthesis between that cultural ethic, which had inspired the construction of Gothic cathedrals and the aesthetic and social components inferred from the theoretical principles of the pioneers of the modern movement.