Wislawa Szymborska | Nuvole / Clouds

Dovrei essere molto veloce

nel descrivere le nuvole -

già dopo una frazione di secondo

non sono più quelle, stanno diventando altre.

La loro caratteristica è

non ripetersi mai

in forme, sfumature, pose, disposizione.

Non gravate dalla memoria di nulla,

si librano senza sforzo sui fatti.

Claude Monet | The Clouds, 1923-1926 | Musée de l'Orangerie

Franz Kafka | Domenica saremo insieme..

Nella primavera del 1919, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) - una delle maggiori figure della letteratura del XX secolo ed importante esponente del modernismo e del realismo magico europeo - conosce la giornalista, scrittrice e traduttrice Ceca Milena Jesenská (Praga, 10 agosto 1896 - Campo di concentramento di Ravensbrück, 17 maggio 1944), moglie del critico e scrittore ebreo Ernst Pollak (1886-1947), residente a Vienna, in cui si era dovuta trasferire dopo essere stata allontanata dalla famiglia che non le aveva perdonato il matrimonio con un ebreo.

Poiché gli introiti di Pollak non erano sufficienti per un'adeguata vita della coppia a Vienna, Milena contribuì lavorando come traduttrice.

Nel 1919 si imbatté in un breve racconto dello scrittore praghese Franz Kafka, e gli scrisse per ottenere l'autorizzazione alla traduzione dal tedesco al ceco. Da quel momento cominciò una intensa corrispondenza tra i due.

Franz Kafka e Milena Jesenska

Alda Merini: Buon Natale!

A Natale non si fanno cattivi pensieri

ma chi è solo

lo vorrebbe saltare questo giorno.

A tutti loro auguro di

vivere un Natale

in compagnia.

Un pensiero lo rivolgo a

tutti quelli che soffrono

per una malattia.

Daniel Rodgers

Daniel Rodgers | It's Christmas time

Daniel Rodgers is an figurative artist and illustrator living in Sunderland, UK.

"I'm a freelance illustrator and artist that specialises in making illustrations on the realistic side of things.

As you'll see through this site I like to work on a variety of subject matter from traditional Christmas cards to fantasy and scifi illustrations.

Above all I find it most satisfying to inject some element of story into my work.

My work focuses on a love of painting and drawing with a narrative context".

Gaudenzio Ferrari | The Concert of Angels, 1534-1536

The Concert of Angels is a Fresco created between 1534 and 1536 by Gaudenzio Ferrari (c. 1471 - January 11, 1546) a Northern Italian painter** and sculptor of the Renaissance** and housed in Sanktuarium Santa Maria delle Grazie, Saronno, Italy.

Gaudenzio Ferrari was born to Franchino Ferrari at Valduggia in the Valsesia in the Duchy of Milan. Valduggia is now in the Province of Vercelli in Piedmont. He is said to have first learned the art of painting at Vercelli from Gerolamo Giovenone.

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".