L'ultima lettera di Virginia Woolf al marito Leonard, 1941

Nella sera del 28 marzo 1941, poco dopo l'alba devastante della seconda guerra mondiale, la scrittrice Britannica Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), ossessionata dai suoi fantasmi e da sempre incline alla depressione, si riempì di sassi le tasche del soprabito ed entrò nel fiume Ouse dietro la sua casa per non uscirne mai viva.

Prima di lasciarsi morire, Virginia Woolf scrive al marito Leonard Woolf (Scrittore, editore, giornalista e teorico politico Britannico, 1880-1969) una lettera struggente.

Dame Laura Knight | The Dark Pool, 1908-1918

Gabriele D'Annunzio | Ho desiderio di te stasera..

Ho un desiderio desolato di te stasera.

Ahimè stasera e sempre.

Ma stasera il desiderio è di qualità nuova.

È come un tremito infinitamente lungo e tenue.

Sono come un mare in cui tremino tutte le gocciole,

tremano tutte le ali dell’anima,

tremano tutte le fibre dei nervi,

tremano tutti i fiori della primavera

Giovanni Boldini | La lettera mattutina

Tolstoy's Love Letters to Valeria Arsenev

In a letter dated Nov. 2nd, 1856 Leo Tolstoy writes:

"I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious - your heart, your soul.

Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know.

Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.

Forgive me this silly comparison: to love as the silly man does is to play a sonata without keeping time, without accents, always with the pedal down, with emotion, thereby giving neither oneself nor others true pleasure."

Fatima Ronquillo | Hand with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 'Sonnets from the Portuguese No.44'

Zana Bihiku | Sotto la pioggia in quella panchina

Era sera e pioveva..

Ti chiedo "che facciamo"?

"Vieni con me", mi rispondi

"anche se piove, questa sera non la perdiamo"..

E sotto le ali del generoso albero

Ci sediamo sulla panchina

per stare ancora insieme..

Leonid Afremov | Lovers in the park

Emily Dickinson | Portami il tramonto in una tazza / Bring me the sunset in a cup

Portami il tramonto in una tazza

conta le anfore del mattino

le gocce di rugiada.

Dimmi fin dove arriva il mattino -

quando dorme colui che tesse

d’azzurro gli spazi.

Scrivimi quante sono le note

nell’estasi del nuovo pettirosso

tra i rami stupefatti - quanti passetti

fa la tartaruga -

Quante coppe di rugiada beve

l’ape viziosa.

Vladimir Volegov | Thoughts of decadence

John La Farge (1835-1910)

From: Smithsonian American Art Museum

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Painter, stained glass designer. Among his many commissions, decoration of the Trinity Church in Boston placed La Farge at the forefront of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

He early admired the formality and patterning of Japanese art, and he recored his impressions of his travels in Asia in An Artist’s Letters from Japan (1897).

John La Farge was born in New York City, the son of prosperous French emigres, his father having been a refugee from the ill-fated Napoleonic expedition to San Domingo.

La Farge began drawing at an early age, had intermittent instruction, and graduated from the Roman Catholic Mount St. Mary’s College in Maryland.

Artemisia Gentileschi | Artistic importance

The research paper "Gentileschi, padre e figlia" (1916) by Roberto Longhi (Italian academic, art historian and curator, 1890-1970. The main subjects of his studies were the painters Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca) described Artemisia (1593-1652) as "the only woman in Italy who ever knew about painting, coloring, drawing, and other fundamentals".

Longhi also wrote of Judith Slaying Holofernes:

"There are about fifty-seven works by Artemisia Gentileschi and 94% (forty-nine works) feature women as protagonists or equal to men".

These include her works of Jael and Sisera, Judith and her Maidservant, and Esther. These characters intentionally lacked the stereotypical "feminine" traits - sensitivity, timidness, and weakness - and were courageous, rebellious, and powerful personalities (such subjects are now grouped under the name the Power of Women).

A nineteenth-century critic commented on Artemisia's Magdalene stating, "no one would have imagined that it was the work of a woman. The brush work was bold and certain, and there was no sign of timidness".