Reading / Lettura | Quotes and painting

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book".

Édouard Manet - Woman Reading, 1880

"La macchina tecnologicamente più efficiente che l’uomo abbia mai inventato è il libro" 

- Herman Northrop Frye CC FRSC (1912-1991) - Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) was a French Neoclassicist painter. Although he thought of himself as a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was his portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

A man profoundly respectful of the past, he assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style represented by his nemesis Eugène Delacroix.

His exemplars, as he once explained, were "the great masters which flourished in that century of glorious memory when Raphael set the eternal and incontestable bounds of the sublime in art ... I am thus a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator".

Charles Meynier (1768-1832) | History painter

Charles Meynier was a French painter of historical subjects in the late 18th and early 19th century. He was a contemporary of Antoine-Jean Gros und Jacques-Louis David.

Meynier was the son of a tailor.

Already at a young age he was trained by Pierre-Philippe Choffard.

He was a proficient student but nevertheless wished to become a painter, so his elder brother Meynier St-Phal, an actor at the Comédie-Française in Paris, paid for him to train from 1785 with François-André Vincent, who then enjoyed a considerable reputation.

Vladimir Borovikovsky | Portrait of Maria Lopukhina, 1797

Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1757-1825) - Russian artist🎨 of Ukrainian background who was the foremost portraitist of the sentimentalist era and a master of ecclesiastic painting.

Borovikovsky lived in Ukraine until he was 31 years old, having learned the trade of painting from his father, a Cossack and a minor member of the nobility who worked as an icon painter. Only a few of his father’s icons and portraits are extant. Though deeply sincere, they are slightly rough in execution.

Francisque Duret (1804-1865) | Academic sculptor

Francisque Joseph Duret was a French sculptor🎨, son and pupil of François-Joseph Duret (1732-1816).

Before becoming a sculptor, Francisque Duret had shown interest in pursuing a career in theater.

He studied for a brief time at the Conservatoire and his friend Charles Blanc (1813-1882), in an article which he dedicated in 1866, attested to the quality of observing human behavior which Duret had acquired outside his studies of drama: "His continual studies of the pantomime led him to pin down the language of gesture and the meaning of each disposition".

Ludwig van Beethoven: Plaudite amici, comedia finita est..

Beethoven - Andy Warhol 1928-1987

L'Arte! Chi la può comprendere? A chi si può rivolgere una persona per attirare l'attenzione di questa grande Dea...

Beethoven

- Ludwig van Beethoven🎨 (1770-1827) è stato la figura predominante musicale nel periodo di transizione tra l'epoca Classica e Romantica.

Beethoven fu un innovatore, che ampliò il campo di applicazione della sonata, sinfonia, concerto e quartetto, e la combinazione di voci e strumenti in un modo nuovo.

La sua vita personale è stata segnata da una lotta contro la sordità, e alcune delle sue opere più importanti sono stati composti nel corso degli ultimi 10 anni della sua vita, quando era ancora in grado di sentire.

Andrea Appiani (1754-1817) | Neoclassical painter

Andrea Appiani was an Italian🎨 neoclassical painter. He is known as "the elder", to distinguish him from his great-nephew Andrea Appiani, an historical painter in Rome.

Born in Milan, it had been intended that he follow his father's career in medicine but instead entered the private academy of the painter Carlo Maria Giudici (1723-1804) where he received instruction in drawing, copying mainly from sculpture and prints.

Saint Cecilia: Patroness of Musicians

In the fourth century a Greek religious romance on the Loves of Cecilia and Valerian was written in glorification of virginal life with the purpose of taking the place of then-popular sensual romances.

Consequently, until better evidence is produced, we must conclude that St. Cecilia was not known or venerated in Rome until about the time when Pope Gelasius (496) introduced her name into his Sacramentary.

It is said that there was a church dedicated to St. Cecilia in Rome in the fifth century, in which Pope Symmachus held a council in 500.

The story of St. Cecilia is not without beauty or merit. She is said to have been quite close to God and prayed often:

"In the city of Rome there was a virgin named Cecilia, who came from an extremely rich family and was given in marriage to a youth named Valerian. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, fasted, and invoked the saints, angels, and virgins, beseeching them to guard her virginity".

Orazio Gentileschi🎨 | Saint Cecilia with an Angel