Giuseppe Molteni | Romantic painter

Giuseppe Molteni (1800-1867) was an Italian painter.

Forced to abandon his studies at the Brera Academy for financial reasons, Molteni took up the restoration of ancient paintings as a pupil of Giuseppe Guizzardi in Bologna.

On his return to Milan, he soon became one of the most sought-after restorers of the day, a consultant to the Louvre and the British Museum as well as the leading collectors and connoisseurs in Milan and Europe as a whole.

Sibilla Aleramo | Son tanto brava / I'm so good..

Sibilla Aleramo (born Marta Felicina Faccio; 14 August 1876 - 13 January 1960) was an Italian feminist writer and poet known for her autobiographical depictions of life as a woman in late 19th century Italy.

I am so good all day long.

I understand, I accept, I do not weep.

I almost learn to be proud as if I were a man.

But, at the first quiver of violet in the sky

all daytime strength vanishes.

Man Ray | A l'heure de l'observatoire, les Amoureux, 1970

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

Giovanni Boldini | Treccia bionda / Blonde Braid, 1891

Giovanni Boldini | Blond Braid, 1891

Based on its messy and impulsive pictorial style, "Treccia bionda" is generally dated to the beginning of the 1890s, by which point Giovanni Boldini (1842 -1931) had already moved to Paris.

In addition to serving as an example of Impressionist painting from that time, the faintness of the strokes showcases an in-depth knowledge of Frans Hals' chiaroscuro technique; it seems that Boldini may have become close with him during a trip to Amsterdam in 1876.

Unlike many of the artist's female portraits, in which the entire figure functions as a means of showcasing all the details of the protagonists' elegant and elaborate dresses, this painting limits the appearance of the figure to the bust.

Giovanni Boldini | Treccia bionda, 1891 (detail) | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano

Giulio Da Vicchio | Post Macchiaioli painter

Giulio Rontini Da Vicchio (Vicchio di Mugello, 1925 - Livorno, 2004) was a renowned painter who mainly exhibited in Italy but also in Paris and Toronto.

He was the last representative of the Post-Macchiaioli painters.

He was considered the greatest representative of the Livorno painting of the late twentieth century.

Giulio Rontini was the son of the painter Ferruccio Rontini (1893-1964) and takes the stage name Da Vicchio to distinguish himself from his father.

Giuseppe De Nittis | Vita ed opere

De Nittis Giuseppe (1846-1884) - Nacque a Barletta (Bari) il 25 febbr. 1846, da Raffaele e da Teresa Buracchia. Visse gli anni della sua prima giovinezza nella città natale con i fratelli, dopo la morte di entrambi i genitori.

Compiuti i primi studi con G. B. Calò e con V. Dattoli, iniziò a dipingere trovando ispirazione nella natura, con quell'istintiva gioia e dedizione che saranno le doti primarie del suo operare.

Quindicenne, entrò all'istituto delle belle arti di Napoli, dove studiò sotto la guida di G. Smargiassi e di G. Mancinelli.

5 Masterpieces from the Hermitage

The State Hermitage Museum / Государственный Эрмитаж has been open to the public since 1852.

It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.

The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day.

Caravaggio | Lute-Player, 1595-1596

"The Lute-Player", painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1595-96, is the only work by the famous master in Russia and it is considered without any exaggeration to be one of the gems of the Hermitage Museum collection.

The Hermitage painting is known to have belonged to Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.

The Giustiniani collection was put up for sale in Paris and came into the Hermitage in 1808 through the mediation of the director of the Louvre, Dominique Vivan Denon. | © Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) (1571-1610) | The Lute Player, 1596 | Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Famous Sculptures of the Galleria Borghese, Rome

The Galleria Borghese Museum houses and displays a collection of ancient sculptures, bas-reliefs and mosaics, as well as paintings and sculptures dating from the 15th through the 19th centuries.

Among the masterpieces of the collection - the first and most important part of which goes back to the collecting of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1579-1633), nephew of Pope Paul V - are paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini and sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Antonio Canova.

The works are displayed in the 20 frescoed rooms that, together with the portico and the entrance hall, constitute the spaces of the Museum open to the public.

More than 260 paintings are housed in the storerooms of the Galleria Borghese, which are located above the floor of the Pinacoteca and set up like a picture gallery.

Cristoforo Stati (Italian, 1556-1619) | Adone and Venere, XVI-XVII | Installation Galleria Borghese

6 Masterpieces of the Pinacoteca di Brera

The collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera includes some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian and foreign art from the 13th to the 20th century.

The works are displayed on the first floor of the building, where the Academy of Fine Arts is also located.

The Pinacoteca museum, which opened in 1809 thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte, was born as a collection of the finest works of art and was dedicated to the education of students.

The collection included Italian art masterpieces taken from churches and monasteries that were suppressed at the time when Milan was the capital city of the Kingdom of Italy. | Source: © Pinacoteca di Brera

Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757-1822) | Napoleone come Marte pacificatore / Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker, 1811 (detail) | Pinacoteca di Brera

Maria Martinetti | Orientalist painter

Maria Martinetti (1864-1921) was an Italian painter. She was a student of Gustavo Simoni.

She lived and exhibited in Italy and France.

In 1890 she moved to the United States.

She is known for her genre paintings.

5 Masterpieces at the Uffizi Gallery

The Uffizi Gallery entirely occupies the first and second floors of the large building constructed between 1560-1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari.

It is famous worldwide for its outstanding collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the Modern period).

The collections of paintings from the 14th-century and Renaissance period include some absolute masterpieces: Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio, in addition to many precious works by European painters (mainly German, Dutch and Flemish).

Moreover, the Gallery boasts an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, which adorns the corridors and consists of ancient Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.

Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) | Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-1777 | Royal Collection (UK)

5 Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.

Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.

It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.

The Immaculate Conception became a symbol of the universality of the Catholic Church and was used for the conversion of populations across Spain’s global empire. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642) | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

8 Notable artworks at the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes more than 63,000 artworks and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts.

The museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, and performing arts and is a leader in digital innovations.

One of the top comprehensive art museums in the nation, recognized for its award-winning Open Access program and free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the University Circle neighborhood.

John French Sloan | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art

Trained as a journalist, the young John French Sloan (1871-1951) explored social issues more vigorously than most of the painters of his time, portraying working-class urbanites engaged in ordinary activities.

He observed this particular scene through a rear window of his Manhattan apartment.

Perched on a narrow fire escape, a woman hangs fresh laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between tenements.

As evidenced by the painting, the labors of American women at the turn of the 1900s were most often confined to the domestic realm. | Source: © Cleveland Museum of Art

John French Sloan (American, 1871-1951) | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art

Paolo Sala | Veduta painter

Paolo Sala (1859-1924) was an Italian painter, mainly of vedute and genre scenes.

He often painted dal vero, that is, en plein air.

He was also known for his ability to paint animals in rural scenes.

He founded the Lombard Association of Watercolor painters in 1911.

Vittore Carpaccio | Mannerist painter

Vittore Carpaccio (1460/1465-1525) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school who studied under Gentile Bellini.

Carpaccio was largely influenced by the style of the early Italian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina (1430-1479), as well as Early Netherlandish painting.

Although often compared to his mentor Gentile Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio's command of perspective, precise attention to architectural detail, themes of death, and use of bold color differentiated him from other Italian Renaissance artists.

Petrarca | Chiare fresche e dolci acque / Clear, sweet fresh water

Chiare, fresche et dolci acque è la canzone numero CXXVI (126) del Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374).

Fu scritta tra il 1340-1341 ed il poeta fu ispirato, molto probabilmente, dal fiume Sorgue, che scorre nei pressi dell'attuale comune francese di Fontaine-de-Vaucluse (Fonte di Valchiusa).

Chiare, fresche et dolci acque,

ove le belle membra

pose colei che sola a me par donna;

gentil ramo ove piacque

(con sospir’ mi rimembra)

a lei di fare al bel fiancho colonna;

herba et fior’ che la gonna

leggiadra ricoverse

Marie Spartali Stillman | The First Meeting of Petrarch and Laura, 1889

Pompeian red | Ancient colors

Pompeian red refers to the color of iron oxide-based mineral pigment with a hue close to red ochre, so named because of its common use in ancient Roman painting and the fact that it is abundant in the murals of Pompeii.

Studies have shown that walls with Pompeian red backgrounds were painted in various ways, of which the use of cinnabar was the most expensive.

This term also defines the ochre-red color of a plaster characteristic of Roman ceramics.

Pompeii roman freso

Antonia Pozzi | La vita sognata, 1933

Chi mi parla non sa

che io ho vissuto un’altra vita -

come chi dica

una fiaba

o una parabola santa.

Perchè tu eri

la purità mia,

tu cui un’onda bianca

di tristezza cadeva sul volto

Amedeo Modigliani | Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne with her Left Arm Behind her Head

Eleonora Duse a Gabriele D’Annunzio: "Eccoti l’anima mia"

Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) incontra per la prima volta Gabriele D'Annunzio (Scrittore, poeta, drammaturgo, militare, politico, giornalista, 1863-1938) nel 1882, a Roma: quest'ultimo è un giovane affascinante, venuto da poco dagli Abruzzi, ma già potendo vantare la pubblicazione di tre sue opere.

Compare davanti alla Duse e le propone, tout court, di andare a letto con lui.

Eleonora lo congeda con sdegno, ma forse anche con un segreto compiacimento (in quel giorno lo descrive: Già famoso e molto attraente, con i capelli biondi e qualcosa di ardente nella sua persona).

Vittorio Matteo Corcos | Portrait of actress Eleonora Duse | Christie's

Luigi Nono | Genre painter

Luigi Nono (1850-1918) was an Venetian painter.

A young Nono entered the Accademia of Venice, then under the leadership of Pompeo Marino Molmenti. But by at the age of twenty years, he went to Polcenigo in the Friulian countryside, and he began to refine his style of landscape paintings, including Sull' Avemaria, Le sorgenti del Gorgazzo, Ritorno dai campi and Verso sera.

He later returned to painting genre subjects of everyday life, and these paintings would prove to be his most influential.