Sandro Botticelli

At the height of his fame, the Florentine painter and draughtsman Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) was one of the most esteemed artists in Italy.

His graceful pictures of the Madonna and Child, his altarpieces and his life-size mythological paintings, such as 'Venus and Mars', were immensely popular in his lifetime.

The son of a tanner, he was born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, but he was given the nickname 'Botticelli' (derived from the word 'botticello' meaning 'small wine cask').

Marie Laurencin | Pittrice cubista

Marie Laurencin (Parigi, 1883-1956) è stata una pittrice, artista ed illustratrice Francese.

Nel 1907 espose per la prima volta al Salon des Indépendants.

Nello stesso anno Picasso le fece conoscere Guillaume Apollinaire.

Da questo incontro nacque un legame passionale e tumultuoso che durò fino al 1912.

Nel 1914 sposò il barone Otto von Wätjen. La coppia si spostò in Spagna dopo la dichiarazione di guerra, prima a Madrid e poi a Barcellona.

Dod Procter | Morning, 1926 | Tate

In 1922, Dod Procter (British painter, 1890-1972) began to paint a series of simple, monumental portraits of young women that she knew.

Emphasising the fall of light across the figures, Proctor gave them a powerful presence.

This painting features Cissie Barnes, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a fisherman from Newlyn in Cornwall.

This village was home to Procter for most of her working life.

This painting was voted 'Picture of the Year' at the 1927 Summer Exhibition, a yearly show at the Royal Academy in London.

It was bought for the nation by the Daily Mail newspaper.

The popularity of the painting led to its being displayed in New York, followed by a tour of Britain.

Dod Procter | Morning, 1926 | Tate

Wisława Szymborska | The End and the Beginning / La Fine e l'Inizio

Dopo ogni guerra

c'è chi deve ripulire.

In fondo un po' d'ordine

da solo non si fa.

C'è chi deve spingere le macerie

ai bordi delle strade

per far passare

i carri pieni di cadaveri.

Pablo Picasso | Guernica, 1937 | Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Vincent van Gogh | Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, 1887

From: Denver Art Museum

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Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, made in the summer of 1887, gives a sense of the many influences van Gogh was exposed to during his first year in the "hotbed of ideas" [as he called Paris in a letter to his sister].

The small painting captivates us with its bright contrast between the orange yellow of the field and the complementary radiant blue of the sky, the dark green of the new shoots coming up and the vivid vermillion of the poppies, sprinkled across the canvas in free dashes.

The vertical space is evenly divided between earth and sky. The vantage point is surprisingly low to the ground; we look at the scene as though up a hill.

This is not the vast expanse of field shown in Caillebotte’s painting or van Gogh’s later landscapes, but a detail - a highly fragmented view. A slender poplar arcs along the left edge of the painting, and clusters of budding stalks seem to dance on the horizon line.

Vincent van Gogh | Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, 1887 | Denver Art Museum

Sir Peter Lely | Study for a Portrait of a Woman, 1670

From: Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sketch provides a good example of Sir Peter Lely’s (Dutch-born English Baroque Era Painter, 1618-1680) working method, as one of the most successful portraitists in England in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Following the example of Van Dyck, Lely painted only the sitter’s head in his or her presence, sometimes laying in an outline for the pose and costume.

Camille Pissarro at the Museum Barberini

Camille Pissarro | Boulevard Montmartre, Twilight, 1897

In a series of fourteen paintings Camille Pissarro focused on the Boulevard Montmartre in the center of Paris.

From his room in the Grand Hôtel de Russie, with the opera building behind him, he had a view of the busy street on which twenty thousand carriages rattled by every day, past the expensive shops and the popular Café Tortoni.

This picture shows the boulevard with fresh green trees in springtime. | Source: © Museum Barberini