Charlie Chaplin | Il mondo appartiene a chi osa!

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, noto come Charlie, è stato un attore, comico, regista, sceneggiatore, compositore e produttore cinematografico Britannico, autore di oltre novanta film e tra i più importanti e influenti cineasti del XX secolo.

Charlie Chaplin | Vivi!

Ho perdonato errori quasi imperdonabili,

ho provato a sostituire persone insostituibili

e dimenticato persone indimenticabili.

Ho agito per impulso,

sono stato deluso dalle persone

che non pensavo lo potessero fare,

ma anch’io ho deluso.

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".

Volodymyr Tsisaryk / Володимир Цісарик, 1978 | Figurative sculptor

Ukrainian sculptor Volodymyr Tsisaryk was born and grew up in Lviv. His works were seen by almost every tourist who visited the city at least once in recent years.

Volodymyr says that he did not choose the profession, but he was chosen by the profession. After graduating from Lviv State College of Decorative and Applied Arts named after Ivan Trush, Department of Monumental and Decorative Sculpture and obtaining Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors, Volodymyr immediately began creating sculptures the elegance of which show the skill of the author.

Georges Rochegrosse | Orientalist painter

Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) was a French historical and decorative painter.

He was born at Versailles and studied in Paris with Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger.

His themes are generally historical, and he treated them on a colossal scale and in an emotional naturalistic style, with a distinct revelling in horrible subjects and details.

Ernest Higgins Rigg (British painter, 1868-1947)

Ernest Higgins Rigg was born in Bradford and attended the art school there and then at the Academie Julian in Paris.

He first visited Staithes in 1896 and lodged in Hinderwell at Quaker Garth and later stayed at the village’s Commercial Hotel. He moved to Sussex in 1908, but returned to Yorkshire after the First World War, living in Shipley in 1918 and Richmond in 1919. His brothers, Alfred and Arthur H. were both artists.

Raphael | The Sistine Madonna, 1513-1514

One of the most famous paintings of all time has its home in Dresden. Like Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" in Paris or Botticelli's "Birth of the Venus" in Florence, Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" was memorized in our cultural memory.

"The Sistine Madonna", also called "The Madonna di San Sisto", is an oil painting by the Italian artist Raphael. The canvas was one of the last Madonnas painted by Raphael.

Giorgio Vasari called it "a truly rare and extraordinary work".

Auguste Rodin | Artworks and Quotes

"The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that".

"Il corpo umano è prima di tutto uno specchio dell'anima e da questo deriva la sua più grande bellezza".

"L'artista deve creare una scintilla prima di poter fare un fuoco e quindi nasce l'arte, l'artista deve essere pronto a consumarsi al fuoco della sua stessa creazione".

Paul Gauguin | Washerwomen in Arles, 1888

"Washerwomen in Arles" - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands - was painted in that French town, where Paul Gauguin settled late in 1888 summoned by Vincent van Gogh, who hoped to found a community of artists there.

The work captures the painter’s concern in emphasising expressiveness over and above formalism, which entailed his final break with Impressionism.

This principle, for which Gauguin coined the term Syntheticism, was characterised by non-mimetic representations of nature, the rejection of the third dimension taken from Japanese prints and the separation of colour in broad contrasted planes by means of dark lines.

Paul Gauguin | The Washerwomen in Arles | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Augustus John | Post-Impressionist painter

Augustus John, in full Augustus Edwin John (born January 4, 1878, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales - died October 31, 1961, Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England), Welsh painter who was an accomplished portraitist, muralist and draughtsman.

John studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1894-1898.

By age 20 he had won a reputation as one of the most brilliant draughtsmen in England.

His portraits and other paintings done around 1900 gained attention for their vigour and skillful technique.

Robert Lee Berran (1923-2020) Figurative painter /Illustrator

Robert Lee Berran was born in Mt. Vernon, NY on December 24, 1923 and was raised in Scarsdale, NY. Between the ages of 19-22 he served as a medic during World War II under General Patton's third army in Europe. After the war he studied at the Art Students League in NYC from 1947-1950.

After leaving the Art Students League, he painted movie posters for 20th Century Fox. Four years later he joined the Illustrators Group where artists were predominately from the Haddon Sundbloom School of Painting.

His work at the Illustrators Group was for prestigious clients such as Ford and Coca-Cola. Subsequently Bob illustrated for the Seventh Day Adventists for their series of children's books "My Bible Friends" which are still popular today.

Gustav Feith (1875-1951) | Flowers painter

Born in Vienna, Gustav Feith was known as a watercolorist and graphic artist and became well-known for his pieces of flowers.

Feith trained both with an apprenticeship as a lithographer with Ferdinand Pamberger (Austrian painter, 1873-1956) and also as a painting student with Josef Hasselwander (Austrian painter, 1812-1878).

Feith also worked as a draftsman in the Vienna Graphic Arts Institute.

Friedrich Von Amerling | Academic painter

Friedrich von Amerling (14 April 1803 - 14 January 1887) was an Austro-Hungarian portrait painter in the court of Franz Josef.

He was born in Vienna and was court painter between 1835-1880. With Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller he is one of the outstanding Austrian portrait painters of the 19th century.

Henri Fantin-Latour | Immortality, 1889

Henri Fantin-Latour | Immortality, 1889 | National Museum Wales

The personification of Immortality holds the palm of victory and scatters flowers onto a tomb inscribed "DELACROIX".

Behind, the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral and the dome of the Panthéon national monument emerge from the Paris skyline.

Fantin-Latour was greatly inspired by the works of Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), whose naturalistic use of colour and form continued to be controversial long after his death.

Raphael - Portraits

Raffaello (1483-1520)🎨, nato Raffaello Sanzio, fu incoronato "Principe dei pittori" da Giorgio Vasari, un biografo di artisti del XVI secolo.

Da suo padre, Raffaello imparò a dipingere; nella sua città natale, Urbino, ha vissuto la vita di corte intellettuale.

Un anno dopo la morte improvvisa di suo padre, Raphael entrò nel laboratorio del principale pittore di Urbino all'età di dodici anni e superò rapidamente il suo maestro.

All'età di 21 anni, Raffaello si era trasferito a Firenze, dove ha abbracciato le opere di Michelangelo e Leonardo da Vinci.

A Firenze, i suoi numerosi dipinti della Madonna col Bambino mostrano il suo caratteristico calore umano, la sua serenità e figure sublimemente perfette.

Massimo Stanzione | Baroque painter

Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades.

Most of his work, in both oils and fresco (these usually for ceilings), depicted religious subjects.

A papal knight, he is often referred to as Cavalliere Massimo Stanzione, especially in older sources.

Born in Frattamaggiore, Naples in 1585, Massimo Stanzione was influenced by Caravaggio.

Christmas Cards

Norman Rockwell | Christmas Card | Two sleeping children, 1952

The first recorded Christmas cards were sent by Michael Maier to James I of England and his son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1611.

The next cards were commissioned by Sir Henry Cole and illustrated by John Callcott Horsley in London on 1 May 1843.

The central picture showed three generations of a family raising a toast to the card's recipient: on either side were scenes of charity, with food and clothing being given to the poor.

Louis Béroud | An elegantly dressed copyist at the Louvre, 1898

Copying was an essential part of any 19th century artist’s education and the Musée du Louvre - unlike most academies and ateliers - was open to both men and women who studied its many masterpieces.

Louis Béroud was a regular copyist at the Louvre; indeed, in August 1911, it was Béroud who alerted authorities that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was missing (the painting, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, was returned two years later).

Béroud so relished the practice of copying works in the museum's collection, that he made at least twenty-six compositions of the subject.

Here, a woman in blue paints at an easel positioned in front of Leonardo’s monumental painting of the so-called Virgin of the Rocks.

Sitting on a stool with a protective tarp beneath her, she raises her right arm, touching her paintbrush to the surface of the canvas, her left hand resting on her hip, and a ready rag spills out of the box of supplies open on a stool to her left.

Almost all of the copyists in Béroud’s scenes are women who enjoyed access to the museum as amateur painters. | © Sotheby's

Louis Béroud | An elegantly dressed copyist at the Louvre, 1898 | Sotheby's

Rembrandt | Adoration of the Magi, 1632

The Adoration of the Magi (anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: A Magis adoratur) is the name traditionally given to the subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worship him.

Leonardo da Vinci | Nativity paintings

Giorgio Vasari🎨, in the enlarged edition of Lives of the Artists (1568) introduced his chapter on Leonardo with the following words:

"In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actio ns seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill".

André Derain | Still life

André Derain (1880-1954), French painter, sculptor, printmaker and designer - was one of the principal Fauvists.

Derain studied painting in Paris at the Académie Carriere from 1898-1899.

He developed his early style in association with Maurice de Vlaminck, whom he met in 1900, and with Henri Matisse, who had been Derain’s fellow student at the Académie Carriere.

Together with these two painters, Derain was one of the major exponents of Fauvism from 1905-1908.