Wisława Szymborska | Ruben's Women

Herculasses, a feminine fauna.

Naked as the crashing of barrels.

Cooped up atop trampled beds.

They sleep with mouths poised to crow.

Their pupils have retreated in the depths,

and penetrate to the heart of their glands,

trickling yeast into their blood.

Peter Paul Rubens | Venus in Front of the Mirror, (1614-1615) | Museo Nacional del Prado

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough bloats in a bowl,

baths are steaming, wines are blushing.

piglets of cloud are dashing across the sky,

trumpets neigh in physical alarm.

O pumpkinned, O excessive ones,

doubled by your unveiling,

trebled by your violent poses,

fat love dishes.

Peter Paul Rubens | Mars and Rhea Silvia, 1617

Their skinny sisters got up earlier,

before dawn broke within the painting,

and no one saw them walking single file

on the unpainted side of the canvas.

Exiles of style. Ribs all counted.

Birdlike feet and hands.

They try to ascend on gaunt shoulderblades.

The thirteenth century would have given them a golden backdrop.

The twentieth, a silver screen.

But the seventeenth has nothing for the flat-chested.

For even the sky curves in relief -

curvaceous angles, a curvaceous god -

a moustached Apollo astride a sweaty steed

enters the steaming bedchamber.

Wisława Szymborska (Polish poet, essayist, translato, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923-2012)

Le Quattro Stagioni | I Concerti ed i Sonetti di Antonio Vivaldi

Le Quattro Stagioni è un gruppo di quattro concerti per violino del compositore italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Compositore e violinista Barocco, 1678-1741), ognuno dei quali dà espressione musicale ad una stagione dell'anno.

Furono composti intorno al 1718-1720, quando Vivaldi era maestro di cappella alla corte di Mantova.

Furono pubblicati nel 1725 ad Amsterdam, in quella che all'epoca era la Repubblica delle Sette Province Unite, insieme ad altri otto concerti, con il titolo Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione.

Un ritratto anonimo ad olio conservato al Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, generalmente ritenuto di Vivaldi, 1723

Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" | Music and Sonnets

The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.

These were composed around 1718-1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua.

They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam in what was at the time the Dutch Republic, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).

Orazio Gentileschi | Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), 1612 | Detroit Institute of Arts

Johannes Vermeer | The Milkmaid / La Lattaia, 1657-1658

The Milkmai was painted by Johannes Vermeer in about 1657-58.

The small picture (18 x 16 1/8 in., or 45.5 x 41 cm) could be described as one of the last works of the Delft artist’s formative years (ca. 1654-58), during which he adopted various subjects and styles from other painters and at the same time introduced effects based on direct observation and an exceptionally refined artistic sensibility.

Influenced by the detailed realism of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) and his followers in Leiden, Vermeer created his most illusionistic image in The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-2344).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini | David, 1623-1624

David is one of the four sculptures executed by the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

The artist worked on the statuary groups for the Villa on the Pincio for seven crucial years during which his brilliance, freedom, narrative bent, and delight in amazement blossomed and then developed in all their power.

The work had been commissioned from Bernini by Cardinal Montalto for his villa in 1623.

The cardinal’s untimely death blocked the commission, but Scipione Borghese decided to take it over.

Bernini interrupted his work on the Apollo and Daphne, dedicating himself to this new sculpture, which - according to Baldinucci, one of the artist’s first biographers - he finished in only seven months of work.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini | David, 1623-1624 | Galleria Borghese

Rembrandt van Rijn | Woman with a Pink, early 1660

Her forehead crisscrossed with jewels, the sitter of this portrait displays a pink, or carnation, a symbol of love and marriage.

The gilt picture frame visible in the background locates her in a luxurious interior, but her pensive expression elevates the portrait beyond a mere statement of status.

If scholars are correct in identifying the sitter in the pendant portrait hanging next to this one as auctioneer Pieter Haringh, then the woman who appears here must be his wife, Elisabeth Delft. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rembrandt | Woman with a Pink, early 1660s | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rembrandt's 'recipe for a stopping-out varnish'

Rembrandt's 'recipe for a stopping-out varnish' on the verso of a drawing 'Landcape with a River and Trees', 1654-55.

• "..in order to etch, take white turpentine oil, and add half the turpentine to it; pour the mixture into a small glass bottle and let it boil in pure water for half an hour".

It is evident that Rembrandt refers (alas fragmentarily) to a so-called 'stopping-out varnish', used to terminate the bite of acid in select areas of a plate that had already been exposed to the etching agent.

Thus other portions will remain exposed to the acid to deepen the bite.

Eberhard Keil | Pupil of Rembrandt

Eberhard Keil or Keyl dit Monsù Bernardo (1624-1687) was a Danish Baroque painter who became a pupil of Rembrandt.

Keil was born in Helsingør.

According to the RKD he was a pupil of the Danish painter Morten Steenwinkel, who became a pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the years 1642-1644.