Andrea Mantegna | La Camera degli Sposi, 1465-1474

The Camera degli Sposi ("bridal chamber"), sometimes known as the Camera picta ("picture chamber"), is a room frescoed with illusionistic paintings by Andrea Mantegna in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy.

During the fifteenth century when the Camera degli Sposi was painted, Mantua was ruled by the Gonzaga, who maintained Mantua's political autonomy from its much stronger neighbors Milan and Venice by bidding their support out as a mercenary state.

By commissioning Mantegna to paint the chamber, Ludovico III Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, sought to give the Gonzaga rule more cultural credibility at a time when other Northern Italian courts such as the Ferrara were commissioning their own "painted chambers".

The Italian painter Bruno di Maio died at the age of 80!

Bruno di Maio (1944-2024), one of the Italy's best Figurative artists, passed away in December 2024, at the age of 80!

Di Maio was born in North Africa in 1944 to Italian parents.

Artist, graphic designer, excellent watercolourist, di Maio has worked mainly for an international clientele, as well as in the main cities of Italy, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Tokyo and Madrid.

William B. Yeats | Quando sarai vecchia / When you are old

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) è stato un poeta, drammaturgo e scrittore Irlandese, nonché una delle figure più importanti della letteratura del XX secolo.

Fu una forza trainante dietro l'Irish Literary Revival ed, insieme a Lady Gregory, fondò l'Abbey Theatre, di cui fu il direttore durante i primi anni.

Gli fu conferito il premio Nobel per la Letteratura nel 1923 ed in seguito ricoprì due mandati come senatore dello Stato libero d'Irlanda.

Quando tu sarai vecchia, tentennante

tra fuoco e veglia prendi questo libro,

leggilo senza fretta e sogna la dolcezza

dei tuoi occhi d’un tempo e le loro ombre.

Vincent van Gogh | A Pair of Lovers (Eglogue en Provence), 18888 | Sotheby's

Oscar Wilde | Flower of Love

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay

I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song,

Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,

You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled meed.

Paul Cadmus

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