William Blake | A Poison Tree / Un albero avvelenato

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

William Blake | Songs of Experience: A Poison Tree, 1794 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Greuze | Le uova rotte, 1756

Anche se questo dipinto venne eseguito a Roma e presenta ambiente e costumi italiani, la fonte del soggetto ritratto è un quadro olandese del Seicento dell’artista Frans van Mieris il Vecchio (1635-1681), Le uova rotte (Museo dell’Ermitage, San Pietroburgo), che l'artista francese Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) conosceva attraverso un’ incisione.

Le uova rotte simboleggiano la perdita della verginità.

Il bambino che cerca di ricomporre le uova rappresenta l’ignara innocenza dell’infanzia.

Il quadro suscitò una reazione favorevole quando fu esibito al Salon di Parigi nel 1757. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Baptiste Greuze | Broken Eggs, 1756 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Louis Rolland Trinquesse | After the Soirée, 1774

Louis Rolland Trinquesse (1746-1800) was a French Rococo painter.

He was a student at the Académie Royale from 1758 to at least 1770 and worked both as a portrait painter and a Genre painter.

His portraits are usually gentle and uncomplicated likenesses painted in pastel colours, for example the Young Girl (1777; Paris, Louvre).

Constance Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801

Constance Marie Charpentier (1767-1849) was a French painter.

She specialized in genre scenes and portraits, mainly of children and women.

She was also known as Constance Marie Bondelu.

Constance-Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801 | Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Joseph Wright of Derby | A view of Vesuvius from Posillipo, Naples

From: Art Gallery of South Australia

Joseph Wright (1734-1797) began his career as one of Britain foremost portrait painters, but, following a visit to Italy between 1773 and 1775, he turned his gaze to landscape painting, becoming recognised for his deep understanding and exploration of light.

Wright visited the Bay of Naples in 1774, finding its awe-inspiring view of Mount Vesuvius particularly moving.

Édouard Manet | Young Lady in 1866, 1866

Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent, had recently posed as the brazen nudes in Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass (both Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Here, appearing relatively demure, she flaunts an intimate silk dressing gown.

Critics eyed the painting as a rejoinder to Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot and as indicative of Manet’s "current vice" of failing to "value a head more than a slipper".

Richard Westall | The Reconciliation of Helen and Paris after his Defeat by Menelaus, 1805

Richard Westall RA (1765-1836) was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary events, best known for his portraits of Byron.

He was also Queen Victoria's drawing master.

Westall was the more successful of two half-brothers (both sons of a Benjamin Westall, from Norwich) who both became painters.

His younger half-brother was William Westall (1781-1850), a much-travelled landscape painter.

Richard Westall | The Reconciliation of Helen and Paris after his Defeat by Menelaus, 1805

Immanuel Kant: "To be is to do!" / "Essere è fare!"

• "Pazienta per un poco: le calunnie non vivono a lungo".

• "La verità è figlia del tempo: tra non molto essa apparirà per vendicare i tuoi torti".

• "Abbi il coraggio di servirti della tua propria intelligenza!"

Caspar David Friedrich | Wanderer above the sea of fog

Victor Hugo | Depuis six mille ans la guerre / For six thousand years the war

For six thousand years the war

Pleasing the quarrelsome peoples,

And God wastes his time doing

The stars and the flowers.

Francisco Goya | Third of May, 1808 | Museo del Prado

Queen María Isabel of Braganza | Founder of the Museum del Prado

María Isabel of Braganza was born in Lisbon on 19 May 1797, daughter of John VI of Portugal and Carlota Joaquina of Spain.

She became queen of Spain when she married her uncle, Ferdinand VII, on 28 September 1816 and became his second wife.

She died during childbirth in Aranjuez on 26 December 1818.

It must be noted that this is a posthumous portrait.

The artist was the son of Vicente López and his most faithful disciple.

Bernardo López Piquer (1801-1874) | Maria Isabel of Portugal in front of the Prado in 1829 | Museo del Prado

Violante Beatrice Siries | Portrait painter

Violante Beatrice Siries (1709-1783) was an Italian painter.

She was born in Florence and studied under Hyacinthe Rigaud and François Boucher in Paris from 1726.

Returning later to Florence she married Giuseppe Cerroti and continued her artistic studies under Conti.

Luisa Roldàn | Baroque sculptor

Luisa Roldàn | The Entombment of Christ, 1700-1701 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Entombment is one of the two "jewel-like sculptures" Luisa Roldán gave to the newly installed King Philip V of Spain in 1701, petitioning him to appoint her sculptor to the royal court.

In the previous decade she had pioneered a genre of sculpture - powerfully conceived and exquisitely modelled and painted figural groups, made on a deliberately intimate scale - of which this is perhaps the finest.

Luisa Roldàn | The Entombment of Christ, 1700-1701 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Martin Drolling | Genre painter

Martin Drolling (Oberhergheim, September 19, 1752 - Paris, April 16, 1817, aka Drolling the Elder) was a French painter.

He was father to Michel Martin Drolling, and to Louise-Adéone Drölling, one of the few successful female painters of the time.

Martin Drolling, a native of Oberhergheim, near Colmar, was born in 1752.

He received his first lessons in art from an obscure painter of Schlestadt, but afterwards went to Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts.

Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA | Presidente fondatore della Royal Academy of Art

Reynolds, Sir Joshua - Pittore inglese (Plyche mpton, Devonshire, 1723 - Londra 1792). Tra i più celebri ritrattisti inglesi del sec. 18°, la sua grande fortuna fu dovuta oltre che alle sue notevoli capacità innovative nell'ambito di questo genere anche alle sue qualità sociali che lo resero caro non solo all'aristocrazia, ma anche a pensatori e scrittori dell'epoca.

Nella formazione del suo stile, fortemente personale, si combinarono influssi diversi: elementi dei Veneziani, dei Bolognesi, del tardo Rembrandt e di Rubens si aggiunsero a quelli che egli aveva ricevuto dal Hudson e dal Gandy.

La sua pittura rivela un graduale sviluppo dal semplice ritratto obiettivo, secondo la tradizione di Lely, Kneller e Hudson, verso uno stile più ambizioso ed immaginativo, nel quale i modelli vengono rappresentati come personaggi mitologici o fantastici concepiti drammaticamente.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe racconta Tiziano

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Scrittore, poeta e drammaturgo Tedesco, 1749-1832) fece due viaggi in Italia tra il 1786-1788.

Mai la visita di un turista colto fu tanto determinante nella creazione di un’immagine dell’Italia, soprattutto da quando egli raccolse i suoi ricordi nel famosissimo "Italienische Reise", o "Viaggio in Italia" (1813-1817).

A Roma, di fronte alla grande pala della Madonna col Bambino e Santi, 1533-1535 scriveva:

"Più incantato ancora rimasi di fronte ad un quadro di Tiziano.

Esso supera in splendore quanti ne ho finora veduti. Se ciò dipenda dalla mia più affinata sensibilità, o se davvero esso sia il più bello, non saprei dire di certo".

Tiziano Vecellio | Pala della Madonna col Bambino e Santi, (1533-1535) | Chiesa di S. Niccolò della Lattuga in Campo dei Frari al Lido di Venezia

Johann Wolfgang Goethe | Mi batteva il cuore, svelto, a cavallo!

Mi batteva il cuore, svelto, a cavallo!

E via! Con l'impeto dell'eroe in battaglia.

La sera cullava già la terra,

e sui monti si posava la notte;

se ne stava vestita di nebbia la quercia,

gigantesca guardiana, là

dove la tenebre dai cespugli

con cento occhi neri guardava.

Sir Frank Dicksee | La Belle Dam Sans Merci

Bonaparte's Love Letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais, 1796

"I am going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image… I cannot wait to give you proofs of my ardent love… How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf a la creole. You know that I will never forget the little visits, you know, the little black forest…

I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment I will be in it. To live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields.

Kisses on your mouth, your eyes, your breast, everywhere, everywhere".

Andrea Appiani (1754-1817) Joséphine de Beauharnais (The Empress of the French as the first wife of Emperor Napoleon I, 1763–1814)

Anne-Louis Girodet | Pittore Romantico

Girodet-Trioson ‹ˇʃirodè trioʃõ´›, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy detto - Pittore, litografo e scrittore Francese (Montargis, Loiret, 1767 - Parigi 1824).

Allievo prediletto di Jacques-Louis David, ne ereditò un formale linguaggio neoclassico. Vincitore, nel 1789, del Prix de Rome, soggiornò a lungo in Italia.

Nuovamente a Parigi, nel 1795, dipinse alcuni ritratti (Mademoiselle Lange comme Danae, New York, coll. Wilderstein) che preannunciavano il gusto romantico, ma predilesse temi storici e celebrativi (Ossian accoglie nel Walhalla i generali della Repubblica caduti per la patria, 1801, castello della Malmaison) talvolta elaborati in faticose composizioni.

Charles Meynier | Apollo and the Muses, 1798

Charles Meynier | Clio, Muse of History | Cleveland Museum of Art

In 1797 François-Bernard Boyer-Fonfrède, an industrial textile manufacturer, commissioned Charles Meynier (Paris, 1768-1832) to paint nine canvases featuring Apollo and the Muses for a large room in his home in Toulouse.

Meynier exhibited the painting based on this drawing at the Salon of 1800 but ultimately only completed five canvases, as his patron ran out of money.

The paintings were installed in the hall of Wallenried Castle, Switzerland by General Castella de Berlens around 1824, where they remained until 1983.

The group was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2003. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Genre painting

Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities.

One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively - thus distinguishing petit genre from history paintings (also called grand genre) and portraits.

A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person - a member of his family, say - as a model.

In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait - sometimes a subjective question.

The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.

Vincent van Gogh | The reaper after Millet, 1889