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