Johann Wolfgang Goethe | Per l'Anno Nuovo / For the New Year

Tra il vecchio e il nuovo,

la sorte dona

queste ore liete;

e il passato impone

d’aver fiducia

a guardare avanti

e a guardare indietro.

Andy Warhol | Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1982

Francisco Goya | Vita ed Opere

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos, 30 marzo 1746 – Bordeaux, 16 aprile 1828) è stato un pittore ed incisore Spagnolo.

Considerato il pioniere dell’arte moderna, è stato uno dei più grandi pittori spagnoli vissuti tra la fine del XVIII secolo e dell'inizio del XIX.

I suoi dipinti, i suoi disegni e le sue incisioni riflettevano gli sconvolgimenti storici in corso e influenzarono i più importanti pittori coevi e del secolo successivo.

Goya è spesso indicato come l'ultimo degli antichi maestri ed il primo dei moderni.

Gli inizi

Nacque a Fuendetodos, un piccolo paese dell'Aragona, il 30 marzo del 1746. Il padre, José Benito de Goya Franque, era un doratore di origini basche mentre la madre, Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador, apparteneva ad una famiglia della piccola borghesia aragonese. Francisco era il quarto di sei fratelli: Rita battezzata nel 1737, Tomás battezzato nel 1739, Jacinta battezzata nel 1743, quindi il pittore nato nel 1746 seguito da Mariano 1750 e Camilo 1753.

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".

Louis Béroud | Les copistes au Louvre, 1909

Per i studenti del diciannovesimo secolo, il Louvre custodiva l'intera storia dell'arte sulle sue affollate pareti ed offriva una generosa scelta di studio; a differenza della maggior parte delle Accademie e degli atelier, tuttavia, l'accesso era aperto ad uomini e donne.

Vedere e copiare i capolavori del museo era una parte importante della formazione di un artista ed una pratica che Louis Béroud apprezzava es, abilmente ed in modo alquanto unico, usava come soggetto di almeno ventisei delle sue composizioni.

In effetti, Louis Béroud era un visitatore così assiduo del Louvre che gli viene attribuito il merito di aver lanciato l'allarme dopo aver scoperto il furto della "Gioconda" nel 1911.

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".