5 Masterpieces at the Uffizi Gallery

The Uffizi Gallery entirely occupies the first and second floors of the large building constructed between 1560-1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari.

It is famous worldwide for its outstanding collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the Modern period).

The collections of paintings from the 14th-century and Renaissance period include some absolute masterpieces: Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio, in addition to many precious works by European painters (mainly German, Dutch and Flemish).

Moreover, the Gallery boasts an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, which adorns the corridors and consists of ancient Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.

Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) | Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-1777 | Royal Collection (UK)

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883

Like 'The Little Country Maid', this painting was executed while the artist lived near Pontoise, north-west of Paris.

During the 1880s he became interested in painting rural market scenes, several of which were based on the markets at Pontoise and its neighbouring villages.

Such subjects allowed Pissarro to combine the study of the human figure with depictions of outdoor scenes of everyday rural life.

Although he wrote to his son Lucien that he wished the painting to have a 'certain naive freshness', hence the light and informal brushstrokes, the central figure of the 'charcutière' was painted from the model and the pose carefully studied.

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883 | Tate Gallery

Juliette Wytsman | Impressionist painter

Juliette Wytsman (1866-1925) was a Belgian impressionist painter.

She was married to painter Rodolphe Wytsman.

Her paintings are in the collections of several museums in Belgium.

Wytsman was born as Juliette Trullemans on 14 July 1866 in Brussels, in Belgium.

She first studied under Henri Hendrickx at the Bischoffsheim Institute in Brussels.

5 Important artworks at the Tate Gallery

Tate is a family of art galleries in London, Liverpool and Cornwall, known as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool + RIBA North.

When Tate first opened its doors to the public in 1897 it had just one site, displaying a small collection of British artworks.

Today we have four major sites and the national collection of British art from 1500 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art, which includes nearly 70,000 artworks.

Henri Matisse | Reading Woman with Parasol, 1921 | Tate

Matisse painted this work while renting a house near Nice in the South of France.

The relaxed, relatively naturalistic style is typical of his work of the early 1920s.

It was bought by the Contemporary Art Society in 1926 with the intention of presenting it to the Tate Gallery.

Matisse wrote that the painting ‘will represent me as well as possible - moreover, I think that it will not frighten the acquisitions committee of the Modern Museum in London'.

In fact, the Tate initially turned it down, but accepted it in 1938.| Source: © Tate

Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) | Reading Woman with Parasol, 1921 | Tate Collection

Salon des Indépendants, Paris 1884

Since 1884, the Salon des Indépendants has played a key role in the history of world art.

Salon des Indépendants, annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, held in Paris since 1884.

In the course of revolutionary developments in painting in late 19th-century France, both artists and the public became increasingly unhappy with the rigid and exclusive policies of the official Salon, an exhibition held sporadically between 1667-1737 and annually thereafter by the Académie Royale de Peinture, which had maintained almost total control over the teaching and exhibition of art since about 1661.

Edgar Degas | Repasseuses | Musée d'Orsay

5 Masterpieces at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875

In Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, Renoir’s language is wholly impressionistic: in a setting lacking a visible horizon, the flowers and shrubs are created with tiny dabs of colour, providing a constant interweaving of textures around the two small figures.

The woman, whose parasol shades her from the sun, stands close to the man as he leans down, perhaps to pick a flower, hinting at an intimate relationship.

Contrary to what one may think, this canvas was not painted in the countryside but in the garden of Renoir’s new studio in Montmartre.

His friend George Rivière recalled: "As soon as Renoir entered the house, he was charmed by the view of this garden, which looked like a beautiful abandoned park".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875 | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

10 masterpieces at the Museo Nacional del Prado

Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina | Santa Caterina, 1510 | Museo Nacional del Prado

This is one of the Spanish Renaissance’s most emblematic depictions of a female figure and the best known of Yáñez de la Almedina’s works.

Both considerations are due to the visibility this work has received at the Museo del Prado, where it has been one of the essential icons in its galleries of 16th-century Spanish painting ever since it arrived in 1946.

According to Jacopo de la Vorágine’s The Golden Legend, Saint Catherine of Alexandria was a young, wise and virtuous princess who loved the Lord.

Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina (1489-1536) | Santa Caterina, 1510 | Museo Nacional del Prado

Paolo Sala | Veduta painter

Paolo Sala (1859-1924) was an Italian painter, mainly of vedute and genre scenes.

He often painted dal vero, that is, en plein air.

He was also known for his ability to paint animals in rural scenes.

He founded the Lombard Association of Watercolor painters in 1911.

Hermann Hesse | In the Fog / Nella Nebbia / Im Nebel

Strano vagare nella nebbia!

È solo ogni cespuglio ed ogni pietra,

né gli alberi si scorgono tra loro,

ognuno è solo.

Pieno di amici mi appariva il mondo

quando era la mia vita ancora chiara;

adesso che la nebbia cala

non ne vedo più alcuno.

Julius Von Leypold | Wanderer in the Storm, 1835 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Caillebotte | Les Jardiniers, 1877

Exhibited publicly only once in the past century and a half, Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848-1894) Les Jardiniers is a celebrated early example of the artist’s garden compositions, which was rediscovered in the 1990s, having remained in the same family collection for over a hundred years.

Painted in 1877, the scene depicts the well-appointed kitchen garden at the Caillebotte family’s country home in the village of Yerres, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris.

The artist was a teenager when his parents acquired the property as a summer residence, drawn by the grand, Neo-Classical style house and extensive grounds that stretched down to the banks of the nearby river Yerres.

Gustave Caillebotte | Les jardiniers, 1875 | Christie's

Lettere d'amore | Eleonora Duse a Gabriele D’Annunzio: "Eccoti l’anima mia"

Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) incontra per la prima volta Gabriele D'Annunzio (Scrittore, poeta, drammaturgo, militare, politico, giornalista, 1863-1938) nel 1882, a Roma: quest'ultimo è un giovane affascinante, venuto da poco dagli Abruzzi, ma già potendo vantare la pubblicazione di tre sue opere.

Compare davanti alla Duse e le propone, tout court, di andare a letto con lui.

Eleonora lo congeda con sdegno, ma forse anche con un segreto compiacimento (in quel giorno lo descrive: Già famoso e molto attraente, con i capelli biondi e qualcosa di ardente nella sua persona).

Vittorio Matteo Corcos | Portrait of actress Eleonora Duse | Christie's

Luigi Nono | Genre painter

Luigi Nono (1850-1918) was an Venetian painter.

A young Nono entered the Accademia of Venice, then under the leadership of Pompeo Marino Molmenti. But by at the age of twenty years, he went to Polcenigo in the Friulian countryside, and he began to refine his style of landscape paintings, including Sull' Avemaria, Le sorgenti del Gorgazzo, Ritorno dai campi and Verso sera.

He later returned to painting genre subjects of everyday life, and these paintings would prove to be his most influential.

Giovanni Segantini: ".. Amè piace fare all'amore colle mie concessioni…"

• "… Sarò felice quel giorno che noi in un eletto drappello combatteremo uniti contro la volgarità per la bellezza del senso del colore, per la luce che dà vita alla natura, per la purezza viva e ardente della forma di tutte le cose che dà all’opere nostre quell’armonia ideale dell’anima che si dona all’opera per vivere in essa".

• "… Se si volesse entrare a discorrere seriamente d'arte, per farsi ben capire ed evitare equivoci, sarebbe necessario far precedere un breve trattato di psicologia (nientemeno!). Che altro è l'arte, l'arte bella, vera, elevata, se non l'immagine fotografica, il misuratore che segna il grado di perfezione dell'anima umana?"

Konstantinos Kavafis | La Città / Η Πόλις / The City

Hai detto: "Andrò per altra terra ed altro mare.

Una città migliore di questa ci sarà.

Tutti gli sforzi sono condanna scritta. E qua

giace sepolto, come un morto, il cuore.

E fino a quando, in questo desolato languore?

Pavlos Samios / Παύλος Σάμιος (1948-2021)

Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and graphic artist.

In 1882 the sculptor Auguste Rodin agreed to supervise a small group of young women students, one of whom was the seventeen-year-old Camille Claudel.

Auguste and Camille fell in love almost at first sight.

John Henry Henshall | Victorian watercolour painter

John Henry Henshall, usually known as Henry Henshall RWS (1856-1928) was a British watercolourist and etcher.

A favourite theme of Henshall's work is the contrast between the happy innocence of childhood, without cares, and the tribulations of old age.

He was not afraid to tackle uncomfortable subjects and his honest, realistic pictures of ordinary life were quite unusual for painters in the Victorian era.

Henri Evenepoel | Fauve painter

Henri-Jacques-Edouard Evenepoel was born on this day October 3, 1872, in Nice. The artist died at the age of 27, in 1899.

Evenepoel was a French-born Belgian artist, whose most important works are associated with Fauvism.

He first studied art in Brussels at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts between 1889 and 1890, and entered Paris's Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1892.

Evenepoel entered the atelier of Gustave Moreau in 1893, which put him in contact with Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Edgar Maxence, Charles Milcendeau and Léon Printemps.

Happy Birthday to Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer !

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer - a French artist and a leading exponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau - was born on this day, September 30, 1865 to a Jewish family in Algiers, French Algeria.

His works include paintings, drawings, ceramics, furniture and interior design.

In 1865, he began studying drawing and sculpture in Paris at the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in 1879.

He first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882 where he showed a small ceramic plaque.

Emile Claus | Il pittore Luminista

Oggi si celebra il 175° compleanno della figura più brillante del Luminismo, il belga Emile Claus (27 settembre 1849 - 14 giugno 1924).

Dalla sua casa idilliaca lungo il fiume Leie, Claus dipinse capolavori che continuano ad affascinare gli amanti dell'arte in tutto il mondo.

Émile Claus nacque in un piccolo villaggio delle Fiandre occidentali, sulle rive della Lys, sedicesimo figlio di una famiglia di commercianti rurali.

Konstantinos Kavafis | Per le scale / On the stairs / Στες σκάλες

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, noto in Italia anche come Costantino Kavafis / Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης (Alessandria d'Egitto, 1863-1933), è stato un poeta e giornalista Greco.

Kavafis era uno scettico che fu accusato di attaccare i tradizionali valori della cristianità, del patriottismo e dell'eterosessualità, anche se non sempre si trovò a suo agio nel ruolo di anticonformista.

Pubblicò 154 poesie, spesso ispirate all'antichità ellenistica, romana e bizantina, ma molte altre sono rimaste incomplete od allo stato di bozza.

Scrisse le sue poesie più importanti dopo i quarant'anni.

Come un recluso, egli non fu mai riconosciuto durante la sua vita.

Oltre che i suoi soggetti, anticonvenzionali per l'epoca, le sue poesie mostrano anche un'abile e versatile arte, che viene spesso perduta nella traduzione delle sue opere.

La sua poetica viene insegnata nelle scuole greche.

Andre Kohn