Sandro Botticelli | Portraits

Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445 - May 17, 1510) painted a number of portraits, although not nearly as many as have been attributed to him.

There are a number of idealized portrait-like paintings of women which probably do not represent a specific person (several closely resemble the Venus in his Venus and Mars).

Traditional gossip links these to the famous beauty Simonetta Vespucci, who died aged twenty-two in 1476, but this seems unlikely.

These figures represent a secular link to his Madonnas.

With one or two exceptions his small independent panel portraits show the sitter no further down the torso than about the bottom of the rib-cage.

Mary Fairchild (1858-1946)

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low, born in New Haven, Connecticut was an American painter who specialized in landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits.

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts (where she won a three years' scholarship), and in Paris at the Académie Julian and under Carolus Duran.

She had her own studio at 11 Impasse du Maine, (now part of Musée Bourdelle). She married Frederick MacMonnies in 1888 and divorced him in 1909. She married Will H. Low that same year.

Maggie Rudy | Mouseland | Children's book author and illustrator

Children's book author and illustrator Maggie Rudy spent part of her childhood living in England, where she visited Beatrix Potter’s farm on a formative third-grade field trip.

She has since been making mice and their worlds out of felt and scavenged materials for more than twenty years. Maggie lives in Portland, Oregon.

- "I had a couple of felt mice, bought in an English toy shop when I was a child. About 25 years ago, with young children of my own, I took a pattern from those old survivors and began to make my own versions. Then the mice needed somewhere to live, and the whole thing got out of hand.

I began photographing Mouseland for children's books in 2013. I'd previously worked as an artist, showing paintings and sculptures in a gallery. Building Mouseland is much more engrossing, because I constantly need to problem-solve materials and fabrication methods".

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun | Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782

"Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat" is a signed copy by the artist of a very popular self portrait that she painted in 1782 and which is now in the collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild.

The pose is deliberately modelled on Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (also in the National Gallery’s collection), which was formerly, but incorrectly, known as Le Chapeau de Paille (The Straw Hat).

Wisława Szymborska | Scrivere un curriculum / Writing a résumé

Che cos’è necessario?

È necessario scrivere una domanda,

e alla domanda allegare il curriculum.

A prescindere da quanto si è vissuto

è bene che il curriculum sia breve.

È d’obbligo concisione e selezione dei fatti.

Cambiare paesaggi in indirizzi

e malcerti ricordi in date fisse.

Vladimir Kush | Diary of Discoveries

Gabriele Münter e Wassily Kandinsky | Amore ai tempi dell'astrattismo

Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) è stata una pittrice espressionista Tedesca.

Vasilij Vasil'evič Kandinsky / Василий Васильевич Кандинский (1866-1944) è stato un pittore Russo, naturalizzato francese, precursore e fondatore della pittura Astratta.

Insieme, con Franz Marc ed altri, fondarono il movimento artistico espressionista Der Blaue Reiter (Il cavaliere azzurro).

La Münter era di Berlino e proveniva da una famiglia benestante che aveva vissuto a lungo negli Stati Uniti.

Nel 1901 si iscrisse ad un corso d'arte a Monaco di Baviera.

L'anno successivo, poiché alle donne erano precluse le Accademie, iniziò a prendere lezioni presso la scuola d'arte privata Phalanx-Schule (appena fondata da W. Kandinsky) dove seguì i corsi di Wilhelm Husgen e quelli di Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky | Ritratto Gabriele Münter, 1903 | Lenbachhaus, Monaco di Baviera

Pedro Salinas | No, non ti amano, no / No, no te quieren, no..

No, non ti amano, no.

Tu sì, tu ami davvero.

L’amore che hai in più

se lo spartiscono esseri

e cose che guardi,

che tu tocchi, che mai

hanno avuto amore prima.

Marco Grassi

Pablo Neruda | Il vasaio / Potter

Tutto il tuo corpo ha

coppa o dolcezza destinata a me.

Quando ascendo la mano

trovo in ogni luogo la colomba

che mi cercava, come

se ti avessero, amore, fatta d’argilla

per le mie mani di vasaio.

Tomasz Rut | Intimata