Pope Francis: "Dear Poets, help us Dream"

Below is the letter Pope Francis wrote for the book 'Verses to God: An Anthology of Religious Poetry (italian).

Dear poets,

I know that you hunger for meaning, and that is why you reflect on how faith questions life.

This "meaning" cannot be reduced to a concept. No, it is a comprehensive meaning that encompasses poetry, symbols, and feelings.

The true meaning is not found in the dictionary - that's the meaning of words, and words are merely tools to express everything within us.

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

Bartolomeo Bezzi | Genre painter

Bartolomeo Bezzi (1851-1923) was an Italian painter.

Bartolomeo Bezzi was born in Fucine di Ossana (Trento), then in the Austrian Empire.

Having lost his father as a child, Bezzi lived with an uncle and enrolled at the Brera Academy in Milan at the age of twenty, exhibiting for the first time in 1878.

He won the Fumagalli Prize in 1882 and the following year he took part in the Esposizione di Belle Arti di Roma, receiving general acclaim for his landscape painting.

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

Roberto Ferri, 1978 | Portrait of Pope Francis

Roberto Ferri devoted himself to Caravaggesque and academic painting - including Ingres, David, Gericault - but also by Surrealist painters.

Ferri's way of painting is elevated by a technique which is almost virtuosity, where the traditional tools of the surrealism are inserted onto the traditional iconographic elements.

His career took on greater notoriety for having been in charge of portraying Pope Francis.

There were two works commissioned from the Italian artist, which occupy privileged places in the Vatican.

Platone | The Arts in education

The Republic (Greek: Πολιτεία, Politeia) is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice (δικαιοσύνη), the order and character of the just city-state and the just man ecc..

It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.

In the dialogue, Socrates discusses with various Athenians and foreigners the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man.

He considers the natures of existing regimes and then proposes a series of hypothetical cities in comparison, culminating in Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), a utopian city-state ruled by a class of philosopher-kings.

Raffaello | Scuola di Atene - Platone / Raphael - The School of Athens (1509-1511)

Vincenzo Sorrentino, 1956 | Neo Baroque painter

Vincenzo Sorrentino was born in Torre Annunziata, (Naples) Italy.

He is an illustrator, painter, sculptor and modeler of ceramic works.

His exhibition activity began in 1984 in institutional places, private galleries and at cultural institutes.

He taught painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, and since 2001 he his a professor of fresco theory and technique at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.

Antonio Mancini | Verist painter

Antonio Mancini (14 November 1852 - 28 December 1930) was an Italian painter.

Mancini was born in Rome and showed precocious ability as an artist.

At the age of twelve, he was admitted to the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, where he studied under Domenico Morelli (1823-1901), a painter of historical scenes who favored dramatic chiaroscuro and vigorous brushwork, and Filippo Palizzi.

Mancini developed quickly under their guidance, and in 1872, he exhibited two paintings at the Paris Salon.

Giacomo Moretti, 1939 | Genre painter

Giacomo Moretti is an Italian painter born in Cava dei Tirreni in the province of Salerno Italy. For some years he lived in Naples where in 1971 he received, on the occasion of the First Neapolitan Biennial of Contemporary Painting, the diploma with a gold medal.

He later moved to La Rochelle, France. Giacomo Moretti has achieved great success among collectors, obtaining interesting prices.

Luigi Bazzani | Neo-Pompeian painter

Luigi Bazzani, also called Il Bazzanetto, was an Italian painter, illustrator and watercolorist.

He was born November 8, 1836, in Bologna, Italy.

Bazzani studied at Bologna's Accademia di Belle Arti then traveled to France, Germany and, eventually, Rome where he settled down in 1861 and began to specialize in genre and landscape subjects as well as set designs for theaters.

Many of his paintings featured the remains of the city's monuments from classical antiquity.

Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma

Antonio Zoppi (1860-1926) was an Italian painter, mostly of genre and costume scenes, as well as landscapes.

He was born and resident in Novara. In 1881 at Milan he exhibited: Paggio del secolo XVI.

In 1881 at Rome he exhibited: Fate la carità e In vino laetitia.

To other exhibitions he sent: Winter Sun; Dolci ricordi; Il nonno; Adele; Study of a head; A landscaper of Tobacco; and Savoy and Winter Morning.

Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma / Il Nonno suona la fisarmonica per la Nonna | Simpson Galleries, Houston, Texas

Antonio Nunziante, 1956 | Il maestro della Metafisica

Il pittore Italiano Antonio Nunziante afferma che tra Surrealismo e Metafisica: "c’è una commistione.

Mediamente la metafisica mi da più apertura, nel senso che è una realtà possibile e più vicina a noi.

Il surrealismo invece è qualcosa di estremo, oltre una realtà.

Raramente vado oltre la realtà delle cose, infatti nel contesto della mia espressione apparentemente tutto sembra ben proporzionato e normale, ma non è proprio così".

Grazia Deledda (Nobel Prize) | While the east wind blows, 1905

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda (1871-1936) was an Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "For her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general".

She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909.

While the East Wind Blows

A short story by Grazia Deledda published on the official website of the Nobel Prize

From the collection I giuochi della vita, 1905

Translated by Anders Hallengren

Mentre soffia il levante (Original text)

Karl Raupp | Crossing Lake Chiemsee in a storm under the aegis of a guardian angel

Leonardo da Vinci | Ultima Cena / Last Supper, 1494-1498

Last Supper, one of the most famous artworks in the world, painted by Leonardo da Vinci probably between 1494 and 1498 for the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26:21–28, in which Jesus declares that one of the Apostles will betray him and later institutes the Eucharist.

According to Leonardo’s belief that posture, gesture, and expression should manifest the “notions of the mind”, each one of the 12 disciples reacts in a manner that Leonardo considered fit for that man’s personality.

The result is a complex study of varied human emotion, rendered in a deceptively simple composition.

Leonardo da Vinci | Ultima Cena / Last Supper, 1494-1498 | Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan

Luigi Russolo | Futurist painter

Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (1885-1947) was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises (1913).

Russolo completed his secondary education at Seminary of Portograuro in 1901, after which he moved to Milan and began gaining interest in the arts.

He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of noise music concerts in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921.

He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori.

Mariangela Gualtieri | Amore mio / My love

Amore mio,

è difficile da questo fondo, da questo finale, dire come mi manchi,

come immenso tu sei nel mancare, adesso che mi sono persa

fra masse dure, fra cinghie di buio pesto, senza divinità,

senza la tua mano che tutto sorregge.

Marc Chagall | The Lovers, 1929

Giacomo Leopardi | L'infinito / The Infinite

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,

e questa siepe, che da tanta parte

dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.

Ma, sedendo e mirando, interminati

spazi di lá da quella, e sovrumani

silenzi, e profondissima quiete

Caspar David Friedrich | A Walk at Dusk, about 1830-1835 | The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

60 meraviglie d'Italia, patrimonio dell'Umanità | Pagina 8

Di seguito la ottava pagina dei 60 siti Italiani, Patrimonio dell'Umanità

(in ordine alfabetico)

Sacri Monti del Piemonte e della Lombardia

9 beni in 2 regioni

Anno di ammissione: 2003

I nove Sacri Monti nel Nord Italia sono gruppi di cappelle e altri elementi architettonici realizzati tra XVI e i XVII secolo e dedicati a diversi aspetti della fede cristiana.

Giuseppe Modica, 1953 | Metaphysical painter

Giuseppe Modica, born in Mazara del Vallo (TP- Italy), is among the main exponents of Italian Metaphysical painting in the second half of the twentieth century.

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

In 1986 he moved to Rome, where he currently lives and works and holds the chair of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Author "metaphysically new" (D. Micacchi), he occupies a very specific place in contemporary artistic culture.

60 meraviglie d'Italia, patrimonio dell'Umanità | Pagina 9

Di seguito la nona pagina dei 60 siti Italiani, Patrimonio dell'Umanità

(in ordine alfabetico)

Villa Adriana

Lazio, Tivoli (RM)

Anno di ammissione: 1999

Villa Adriana a Tivoli è un eccezionale complesso di edifici classici, creato nel II secolo dall'imperatore romano Adriano.