William Shakespeare | Guardati allo specchio e di’ al volto che vedi..

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest | Sonnet III

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

John William Waterhouse | Mariana in the South, 1897

John Duncan | Pre-Raphaelite / Symbolist painter

John Duncan (1866-1945) was a Scottish painter. Duncan was born in the Hilltown area of Dundee on 19 July 1866, the son of a butcher and cattleman. John, however, had no interest in the family business and preferred the visual arts.

By the age of 15 he was submitting cartoons to the local magazine "The Wizard of the North" and was later taken on as an assistant in the art department of the Dundee Advertiser. At the same time he was also a student at the Dundee School of Art, then based at the High School of Dundee.

In 1887-88 he worked in London as a commercial illustrator, then travelled to the continent to study at Antwerp Academy under Charles Verlat and the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

In 1889 Duncan returned to Dundee and exhibited in the new Victoria Art Galleries extension of the Albert Institute. The following year he became one of the founder members of the Dundee Graphic Arts Association (now Dundee Art Society).

John Duncan | Tristan and Isolde, 1912

Nel cortile dell'amore di Giulietta e Romeo

Giulietta: - "Oh! Come entrasti tu qui? Ed a qual fine? I muri che circondano questo giardino sono ardui, e pressoché inaccessibili; ed il luogo in cui stai ti sarà tomba, se alcuno de' miei ti sorprende".

Romeo: - "Coll'ali dell'Amore valicai l'altezza di que' muri, ché barriera non v'ha al prepotente Amore: tutto che Amor può tentare, Amor l'osa; onde a' tuoi non ebbi riguardo allorché qui venni"…

William Shakespeare: Giulietta e Romeo, Atto II° scena II°

Wislawa Szymborska | Because it was only love / Perché era amore solamente

Cademmo nell’abbraccio,

ci separammo dal mondo,

non sapevamo se eravamo due corpi

o due anime

o un corpo e un’anima

o se semplicemente

non eravamo

Jeff Rowland

Fred Stead | Landscape / Genre painter

Frederick 'Fred' Stead (1863-1940) was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in August 1863.

He studied initially at the Shipley School of Art before being awarded a scholarship to The Royal Cambrian Academy.

Stead gained a reputation as portrait painter of the rich and wealthy of Bradford and became the Chairman of the Society of Yorkshire Artists.

Marc Chagall | Stained glass windows

One of Chagall's major contributions to art has been his work with stained glass. This medium allowed him further to express his desire to create intense and fresh colors and had the added benefit of natural light and refraction interacting and constantly changing: everything from the position where the viewer stood to the weather outside would alter the visual effect (though this is not the case with his Hadassah windows).

It was not until 1956, when he was nearly 70 years of age, that he designed windows for the church at Assy, his first major project. Then, from 1958-1960, he created windows for Metz Cathedral.

Titian | High Renaissance painter

Titian (Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio, known in English as Titian, ca. 1485-1576) was the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice, and the first painter to have a mainly international clientele.

During his long career, he experimented with many different styles of painting which embody the development of art during his epoch.

Youth and debut

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) was born in Pieve di Cadore, a small town at the foot of the Dolomites on the Venetian side of the Alps.

The Vecellios had been based in Cadore since the 14th century. Titian’s father, Gregorio, was a military man. His older brother Francesco was also a painter.

There is still no documentary evidence of Titian’s exact date of birth, but contemporary sources and his early stylistic development suggest that he was born around 1490.

William Shakespeare | Quando quaranta inverni assedieranno la tua fronte..

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow | Sonnet II

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:

Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

Frank Benson | Eleanor and Benny, 1916

William Shakespeare | Alle meraviglie del creato noi chiediam progenie

From fairest creatures we desire increase | Sonnet I

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,

Antonio Frilli | Romeo and Juliet (detail)

Paul Delaroche | The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833

"I am assured that I shall, for losing of a mortal life, win an immortal life" - Lady Jane Grey, February 1554.

Since its rediscovery in 1973 and first exhibition at the National Gallery two years later, Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833, has become one of the nation’s best-loved paintings.

For the first time, 'Painting History' examines this iconic masterpiece in the context of Delaroche’s great historical paintings, particularly the poignant scenes from English history which made his reputation.

The exhibition features seven major international loans of paintings by Delaroche including 'The Princes in the Tower', 1830 and 'Young Christian Martyr', 1854-5 (both Louvre), and 'Strafford on his way to Execution', 1835 (private collection).

Carlo Maria Mariani, 1931 | Metaphysical painter

Carlo Maria Mariani is an Italian painter. His paintings are rooted both in Neoclassicist theory and modernism.

In the 1970s he defended his choice of medium from attacks by art critics by making parallels between the melancholy for the past of neoclassicism and the then trendy conceptual art.

He received international attention in the 1980s with what was called pittura colta ("cultivated painting") and la Nuova Maniera ("The New Style") in Italy, in which he employed old subjects and styles.

Among other things he depicted Andy Warhol as Napoleon and made "improved" and "corrected" versions of works by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.

Henrik Nordenberg | Genre / Interior painter

Carl Henrik Nordenberg (1857-1928) was a German-Swedish landscape, genre and interior painter, etcher and lithographer from the Düsseldorf School.

Nordenberg, nephew of the genre painter Bengt Nordenberg, followed his uncle to Düsseldorf in 1873, where he received private lessons from him.

From 1873 to 1883/1884 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

There Andreas and Karl Müller, Heinrich Lauenstein, Eduard Gebhardt, Julius Roeting, Carl Ernst Forberg and Wilhelm Sohn were his teachers.

Marc Chagall | Paris through my window, 1913

After Marc Chagall moved to Paris from Russia in 1910, his paintings quickly came to reflect the latest avant-garde styles.

In "Paris Through the Window", Chagall’s debt to the Orphic Cubism of his colleague Robert Delaunay is clear in the semitransparent overlapping planes of vivid color in the sky above the city.

The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the cityscape, was also a frequent subject in Delaunay’s work. For both artists it served as a metaphor for Paris and perhaps modernity itself.

Chagall’s parachutist might also refer to contemporary experience, since the first successful jump occurred in 1912. Other motifs suggest the artist’s native Vitebsk.

Marc Chagall | Paris through my window, 1913 | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

Paul Hagemans (1884-1959)

Born in Antwerp, Paul Hagemans was the son of the celebrated Belgian landscape painter Maurice Hagemans (1852-1917).

Hagemans received early artistic instruction from his father but at the age of fifteen enrolled at the Academy of Antwerp.

Here he was fortunate enough to be tutored by one of the most important landscape painters of nineteenth century Belgium, Isidore Verheyden as well as receiving classes in figure painting from Herman Richir.

Ernest Laurent | Neo-impressionist painter

Ernest Joseph Laurent (June 8, 1859 – June 25, 1929) was a French painter and printmaker. He was born in Gentilly and died in Bièvres, Essonne.

Laurent was a Neo-impressionist artist whose main influences were his instructor Ernest Hébert and his friend Georges Seurat.

Laurent took second prize in the Prix de Rome in 1889 and in 1890, Laurent arrived in Rome, where Hébert remained Director of the Académie de France.

From Rome, he went to Assisi where he underwent a mystical experience.

It would profoundly influence his art.

Emil Nolde, l'Espressionista perseguitato dal nazismo..

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) riscoperto e rivalutato dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, viene oggi considerato uno dei maggiori rappresentanti dell’Espressionismo.

Nel 1926 Nolde conseguì una laurea honoris causa all’università di Kiel.

Pochi anni dopo cominciò ad essere perseguitato dai nazisti perché Hitler considerava il modernismo un'arte degenerata: dal 1937 i suoi lavori furono vietati e non gli fu permesso di acquistare i materiali per dipingere.

Tuttavia, con l'aiuto segreto degli amici, in quegli anni produsse segretamente una serie di dipinti nei quali il suo stile si fece più pacato e disteso.

Emil Nolde (nato Hans Emil Hansen) è stato un pittore ed incisore Tedesco-Danese. È stato uno dei primi espressionisti, membro di Die Brücke, ed è stato uno dei primi pittori di pittura ad olio ed acquarello dell'inizio del XX secolo ad esplorare il colore.

Vasiliy Polenov (1844-1927)

Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov /Васи́лий Дми́триевич Поле́нов was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists.

His contemporaries would call him the "Knight of Beauty" as he embodied both European and Russian traditions of painting.

His vision of life was summarized as following: "Art should promote happiness and joy".

As a painter and a humanist, he would truly believe in the civilizing mission of Art, Culture and Education.

The Wanderers’ movement and the Abramtsevo Circle

During the 1880s, his work was spotted by Vladimir Stassov, a supporter of the traveling exhibition society (the Wanderers), which he joined then.

This artistic movement was born from the desire to break with the themes imposed by the Academy to better represent contemporary concerns. In addition, the members promote the accessibility of art among the people by organizing traveling exhibitions (not limited to the artistic centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg).

James Nelson-Lewis, 1953 | Pittore Romantico

Nato in Pennsylvania, Lewis si rese conto in tenera età di avere un dono ed una vocazione artistica.

Ha conseguito un BFA presso il Columbus College of Art and Design. Le sue influenze artistiche vanno da Whistler a Wolf Kahn così come molti contemporanei della pittura americana.

Lewis viene nel campo della pittura con anni di esperienza professionale come illustratore, direttore artistico, designer ed insegnante d'arte all'università.

Personalmente la sua pittura è influenzata dal suo lavoro di designer, illustratore e da anni di pittura ed insegnamento dell'acquerello.

Olga Wisinger-Florian | Impressionist painter

Olga Wisinger-Florian (1 November 1844, Vienna - 27 February 1926, Grafenegg) was an Austrian impressionist painter, mainly of landscapes and flower still lifes. She was a notable representative of Austrian Mood Impressionism.

She originally trained as a concert pianist with Julius Epstein.

Wisinger-Florian switched to painting in the mid-1870s. She was a student of painters Melchior Fritsch (1826-1889), August Schaeffer (de) (1833-1916) and Emil Jakob Schindler.

From 1881 she regularly showed paintings at the annual exhibitions mounted at the artist's house and later often showed at Vienna Secession exhibitions.

Leonardo da Vinci | Modo di colorire in tela

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 491-516

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

491. Del principio di una pioggia.

492. Della disposizione di una fortuna di venti e di pioggia.

493. Delle ombre fatte da' ponti sopra la loro acqua.

494. De' simulacri chiari o scuri che s'imprimono sopra i luoghi ombrosi e luminati posti infra la superficie ed il fondo delle acque chiare.

495. Dell'acqua chiara è trasparente il fondo fuori della superficie.

496. Della schiuma dell'acqua.

497. Precetto di pittura.

498. Precetto.

499. De' dieci uffici dell'occhio, tutti appartenenti alla pittura.

500. Della statua.

501. Per fare una pittura d'eterna vernice.

502. Modo di colorire in tela.

Leonardo da Vinci | Del vento dipinto

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 466-490

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

466. Pittura.

467. Della parte del corpo opaco.

468. Precetto di pittura.

469. De' termini della cosa bianca.

470. Precetto.

471. Perché la cosa dipinta, ancoraché essa venga all'occhio per quella medesima grossezza d'angolo che quella che è più remota di essa, non pare tanto remota quanto quella della remozione naturale.

472. Pittura.

473. Del giudizio ch'hai da fare sopra un'opera d'un pittore.

474. Del rilievo delle figure remote dall'occhio.

475. De' termini de' membri illuminati.

476. De' termini.

477. Delle incarnazioni e figure remote dall'occhio.

478. Pittura.

Leonardo da Vinci | Della prospettiva lineare

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 433-465

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

433. Pittura e sua membrificazione e componitori.

434. Pittura e sua definizione.

435. Pittura a lume universale.

436. De' campi proporzionati ai corpi che in essi campeggiano, e prima delle superficie piane d'uniforme colore.

437. Pittura: di figura e corpo.

438. Pittura: mancherà prima di notizia la parte di quel corpo che sarà di minor quantità.

439. Perché una medesima campagna si dimostra alcuna volta maggiore o minore ch'essa non è.

440. Pittura.

441. Delle città ed altre cose vedute all'aria grossa.

442. De' raggi solari che penetrano gli spiracoli de' nuvoli.

443. Delle cose che l'occhio vede sotto sé miste infra nebbia ed aria grossa.

444. Degli edifici veduti nell'aria grossa.

445. Della cosa che si mostra da lontano.

Julian Onderdonk | Impressionist painter

Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922) was a Texan Impressionist painter, often called "the father of Texas painting".

President George W. Bush decorated the Oval Office with three of Onderdonk's paintings.

The Dallas Museum of Art has several rooms dedicated exclusively to Onderdonk's work. His art studio currently resides on the grounds of the Witte Museum.

Early years

Julian Onderdonk was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, a painter, and Emily Gould Onderdonk. He was the brother of Eleanor Onderdonk, also a prominent Texas painter, sculptor, and art administrator. His grandfather Henry Onderdonk was the Headmaster of Saint James School in Maryland, from which Julian's father Robert graduated.

Yuri Krotov, 1964 | Landscapes

Yuri Krotov / Юрий Кротов was born in Grivenskaya Cossack Settlement, Krasnodar Territory, located close to the Azov Sea. At the age of 8 he met a local painter G.A. Polugaev who became his mentor.

With Polugaev, Krotov traveled to Moscow and enrolled in Moscow High School of Art under the Surikov Art Institute.

After high school he served in the Soviet Army for 2 years before attending the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov.

His style of impressionist painting blossomed on trips to France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Monaco and other European countries.

Vlaho Bukovac | Post-Impressionist painter

Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922) was born in Cavtat, near Dubrovnik. He showed inclination to drawing in his early childhood, but because of his family's poverty he could not continue his education.

At the age of eleven his uncle took him to the United States, where he spent four hard years. His uncle soon died.

In 1871, he returned to Dubrovnik and embarked as an apprentice on a merchant ship that sailed on regular line Istanbul- Odessa-Liverpool.

In 1873 he went to Latin America, where he worked as a letter drawer in a coach factory in Peru. Three years later he returned to Cavtat.

He found a sponsor in the person of Medo Pucic, a poet who recommended him to the archbishop Strossmayer, a very famous and influential Croatian at that time.

Leonardo da Vinci | Della figura che va contro il vento

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 398-432

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

398. Discorso sopra il pratico.

399. Della pratica cercata con gran sollecitudine dal pittore.

400. Del giudicare il pittore le sue opere e quelle d'altrui.

401. Del giudicare il pittore la sua pittura.

402. Come lo specchio è il maestro de' pittori.

403. Come si deve conoscere una buona pittura e che qualità deve avere per essere buona.

404. Come la vera pittura stia nella superficie dello specchio piano.

405. Qual pittura è piú laudabile.

406. Qual è il primo obietto intenzionale del pittore.

Lo Chan Peng 羅展鵬, 1983

Lo Chan Peng was born in Chiayi, Taiwan and graduated Fine Art Department of Chinese Culture University.

Lo Chan-Peng had won many domestic art contests, and became well-known with “Strawberry Journal” series, which honestly records the sub-culture of young generation.

Lo uses his paintings to express what he observed from the real world, which not only depicts the mindset of young generations nowadays, but can be seen as a kind of self-dissect.

Leonardo da Vinci | Delle diciotto operazioni dell'uomo

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 359-397

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

359. Delle diciotto operazioni dell'uomo.

360. Della disposizione delle membra secondo le figure.

361. Della qualità delle membra secondo l'età.

362. Della varietà de' visi.

363. Della membrificazione degli animali.

364. Come la figura non sarà laudabile s'essa non mostra la passione dell'animo.

365. Come le mani e le braccia in tutte le loro operazioni hanno da dimostrare l'intenzione del loro motore il piú che si può.

366. De' moti appropriati alla mente del mobile.

367. Come gli atti mentali muovano la persona in primo grado di facilità e comodità.

Leonardo da Vinci | Della grazia delle membra

Trattato della Pittura - Parte terza | Capitoli 316-358

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

316. Della grazia delle membra.

317. Della comodità delle membra.

318. D'una figura sola fuori dell'istoria.

319. Quali sono le principali importanze che appartengono alla figura.

320. Del bilicare il peso intorno al centro della gravità de' corpi.

321. Delle figure che hanno a maneggiare o portar pesi.

322. Delle attitudini degli uomini.

323. Varietà d'attitudini.

324. Delle attitudini delle figure.

325. Dell'attenzione de' circostanti ad un caso notando.

326. Qualità de' nudi.

327. Come i muscoli sono corti e grossi.

Othello and Desdemona: "Heaven is my judge"

Othello (The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) (ca. 1603) by William Shakespeare is a concentrated, tightly constructed domestic tragedy, with almost no subplot for relief, centered on five or six central characters.

Othello is commonly considered one of Shakespeare's great tragedies and one of his finest works.

Act I

In following him, I follow but myself.

• Iago, scene I

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

• Iago, scene I

Lord Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) | Desdemona (Othello) 1888

Valeria Corvino, 1953

Valeria Corvino was born in Naples and trained through the study of the amazing artistic wealth of her hometown.

Roman sculpture, capricious Baroque, everyday familiarity with fragments of antiquity, the architectural palimpsest of its territory are its first "masters", together with a completely Mediterranean passion for the secrets of the anatomy and the beauty of the human body.

After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, he studied the problems of composition working on photography, and therefore on cuts, the zoomed image, the play of light and shadows.

Combining pictorial training, the passion for sculptural volumes, the secrets of photographic framing, he comes to perfect his innate propensity for balance and harmony.

Serguei Zlenko, 1960 | I ballerini

Nato nella Repubblica di Georgia, Serguei Zlenko / Сергей Зленко si è laureato prima presso la scuola d'arte dell'Accademia d'arte russa, e successivamente ha ricevuto una laurea e un master in belle arti dall'Accademia d'arte Surikov di Mosca nel 1984.

Membro delle associazioni di artisti sia russe che finlandesi, ha è presente in gallerie e collezioni in Irlanda, Finlandia, Svezia, Francia, Stati Uniti e nella nativa Georgia.

Da molti anni Serguei ha un equilibrio vivendo in Irlanda con la Finlandia e viaggiando costantemente per il mondo eseguendo le sue commissioni di ritratti squisite e molto ricercate.