Jacques Van Den Abeele, 1960 | Figurative sculptor

Jacques Van den Abeele, Belgian sculptor, is exhibited in galleries spread over Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States of America.

He realized also monumental sculptures for state orders.

For Jacques Van den Abeele, art is above all a quest for the essential foundations of existence, moving towards what lies behind appearances: feelings, emotions, fears.

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

Auguste Rodin | L'Adieu / Farewell, 1898

The Farewell or The Convalescent / L'adieu - is composed of Camille Claudel with short hair (1884) and two independent hands added in front of her face, the work attests to Rodin's passion for assemblages, evident in both his narrative and portraiture registers.

By placing her head and hands on a block of plaster, Rodin shed light on his thoughts about pedestals.

The construction causes Camille's face to stand out slightly from the plaster block and conveys a sense of slow absorption that contributes to the melancholy of the composition.

Auguste Rodin | L'Adieu /Farewell, 1898 | Musée Rodin, Paris

Mariangela Gualtieri | Sii dolce con me

Sii dolce con me. Sii gentile.

È breve il tempo che resta. Poi

saremo scie luminosissime.

E quanta nostalgia avremo

dell’umano. Come ora ne

abbiamo dell’intimità.

Angeles Anglada

Henri Chapu | Jeanne d'Arc à Domremy, 1873

19th-century France was fascinated by the figure of Joan of Arc, an historical, mythified heroine who figured in the readily anti-British nationalist movement in the second half of the 19th century.

Henri Chapu (French sculptor, 1833-1891), a classical sculptor who explored a sincere, elegant form of naturalism with great finesse, chose to represent not the warrior maiden in a suit of armour but the shepherdess from Lorraine listening to the voices asking her to help the king to liberate the kingdom.

Henri Chapu | Jeanne d'Arc à Domremy, 1873 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Norman Rockwell | Picasso vs. Sargent, 1966

Picasso vs. Sargent was created in 1966 by Norman Rockwell (American painter and illustrator, 1894-1978) for the January 11, 1966 edition of the LOOK magazine.

It is part of the collection of the National Museum of American Illustration.

Norman Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post in 1963 and his paintings took a more political turn.

He spent the last decade of his life creating works that dealt with issues such as civil rights and the fight against poverty.

From 1964 Rockwell went on to create work for LOOK Magazine.

Norman Rockwell | Picasso vs. Sargent, 1966 | National Museum of American Illustration

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

Sphinx of Naxos

The Sphinx of Naxos, also Sphinx of the Naxians, now in the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, is a 2.22 meter tall marble statue of a sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a woman, the chest and wings composed of the impressive feathers of a prey bird turned upward, and the body of a lioness.

The Sphinx stood on a 10 meter column that culminated in one of the first Ionic capitals, and was erected next to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the religious center of Ancient Greece, in 560 BCE.

The first fragments were excavated from the sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo in 1860. The remainder was found in 1893.