Sandro Botticelli | Profile of a Woman / Bella Simonetta, 1485

Museum: Pitti Palace

Collection: Palatine Gallery

Location: Prometheus Room

Technique: Tempera on wood

Size: 61 x 40.5 cm

Inventory: Inv. 1912 n. 353

The painting is also known by the title “Bella Simonetta”, based on an early identification of the young woman as Simonetta Cattaneo (1453-1476), a Genoese noblewoman who went on to marry the Florentine Marco Vespucci in 1469 and was loved by Giuliano de’ Medici.

Vincent Van Gogh | Spectators in the Arena at Arles, 1888

Van Gogh moved to France in 1886 and from February 1888 he was settled at Arles, in Provence, where in just 15 months he produced over 200 canvases.

The subject of this painting is a bullfight at the ancient amphitheatre, and yet the arena is barely noticeable, for the main motif is the public, the colourful crowd gathered to watch the popular spectacle. Amongst the viewers we can see the artist's friends and acquaintances that he so often depicted in other canvaes.

During the period when this painting was produced, Gauguin was working in Arles alongside van Gogh and the latter was much taken with his fellow artist's painting style. Note the flattened space and the replacement of individual strokes with general patches of colour, outlined with a broad dark contour.

Peter Bell, 1969 | Impressionist painter

Peter Bell’s ethereal Impressionist style🎨 permeates his idyllic European coastal scenes. His brushwork and palette showcase the subtleties of light and atmosphere in gauzy skies, lush gardens, charming buildings and glistening waters.

Born in Washington, D.C., Bell was educated at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and the National Art School in his hometown. He was initially a department-store commercial artist and freelancer before devoting himself to full-time painting and teaching. Bell’s critically acclaimed work adorns numerous private collections and has received many awards🎨.

Van Gogh | Le pont de Trinquetaille in Arles, October, 1888

Vincent Van Gogh made some drawings and paintings of the Trinquetaille bridge:

"I have a view of the Rhone - the Iron Bridge of Trinquetaille, where the sky and the river are absinthe-colored, the quays of a lilac tone, the characters blackish, the iron bridge of an intense blue".

To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Saturday, 12 May 1888

I'm writing you another few lines to tell you that I've been to see the gentleman whom the Arab Jew in Tartarin calls "the shustish of the beace".

I still got 12 francs back and my host was reprimanded for keeping my trunk; as I wasn't refusing to pay, he had no right to hold it. If they'd found in favour of the other party, that would have done me harm, because he wouldn't have failed to go around saying that I had not been able or not been willing to pay him, and that he'd been forced to take my trunk.

Odilon Redon | Butterflies, 1910

Before 1900 Odilon Redon made drawings almost exclusively in black and white; afterward he began to focus on paintings and pastels in sensuous color.

Many of his late works in color took nature’s small beauties, such as butterflies, seashells and flowers, as objects of contemplation and presented them with a fantastic intensity.

Redon was a Symbolist; he believed that art could transcend the everyday and open onto a marvelous world of the mind.

Philippe Guillerm (French, 1959)

Philippe Guillerm began his professional life in Paris, France the city where he was born and lived for twenty years.

Through the years, he has traveled around the world with his wife Jacqueline and their two daughters Monique and Swanne on his forty-eight foot sailboat.

Guillerm's music-inspired sculptures are whimsical and curvaceous string instruments, he uses the theme as a way of expressing human nature and needs, you see an instrument, he sees an attitude. In addition to the musical theme, many of his sculptures depict sea scenes and animals.

Anna Bocek (Polish, 1973)

Anna Bocek studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland, Faculty of Painting Set Design. Diploma in 1999. Undoubtedly, such mainspring of art for me is theatre - the most important source of inspiration and spiritual experiences both, as a viewer and an artist. Both aspects are equally important for me anyway.

The first directly influences the topics of my paintings (related not so much to the theatrical space itself, as to the human being existing in it). The second one makes my paintings come to life and gives them tree-dimensional characteristic.