Hippolyte Flandrin | Neoclassical painter

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864) was a French Neoclassical painter.

His most celebrated work, Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer (1836) is held in the Louvre.

From an early age, Flandrin showed interest in the arts and a career as a painter.

He was the second of three sons, all of whom were painters.

Auguste, his older brother, spent most of his life as a professor at Lyon and later died there.

Wisława Szymborska | Ruben's Women

Herculasses, a feminine fauna.

Naked as the crashing of barrels.

Cooped up atop trampled beds.

They sleep with mouths poised to crow.

Their pupils have retreated in the depths,

and penetrate to the heart of their glands,

trickling yeast into their blood.

Peter Paul Rubens | Venus in Front of the Mirror, (1614-1615) | Museo Nacional del Prado

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough bloats in a bowl,

baths are steaming, wines are blushing.

piglets of cloud are dashing across the sky,

trumpets neigh in physical alarm.

O pumpkinned, O excessive ones,

doubled by your unveiling,

trebled by your violent poses,

fat love dishes.

Peter Paul Rubens | Mars and Rhea Silvia, 1617

Their skinny sisters got up earlier,

before dawn broke within the painting,

and no one saw them walking single file

on the unpainted side of the canvas.

Exiles of style. Ribs all counted.

Birdlike feet and hands.

They try to ascend on gaunt shoulderblades.

The thirteenth century would have given them a golden backdrop.

The twentieth, a silver screen.

But the seventeenth has nothing for the flat-chested.

For even the sky curves in relief -

curvaceous angles, a curvaceous god -

a moustached Apollo astride a sweaty steed

enters the steaming bedchamber.

Wisława Szymborska (Polish poet, essayist, translato, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923-2012)

Tatiana Deriy, 1973 | Figurative painter

Tatiana Deriy / Татьяна Дерий is a dynamically growing painter, whose major creative goal is comprehension of unity of the world's esthetic beauty and its profound meaning as well as rendering them to viewers through painting.

Born in a wonderful part of Moscow region, not far from "Archangelskoye" estate full of creations of famous architects and sculptors, refinement of palace parks and canvases by Veronese and Tintoretto, at an early age she developed special world outlook which later on defined the tenor of her work, based on the sense of harmony and beauty.

Maki Horanai, 1977 | Magic realism painter

Born in Japan, Maki Horanai 洞内麻希 moved to Australia from Japan in 2005 and has had 18 solo exhibitions in various cities throughout Australia.

She grew up in small seaside villages in Hokkaido, northern Japan, where she often sat or played along the beach.

Maki's early influences were the ocean, the shore, the birds and islands she saw both in reality and in her imagination.

She began painting in high school and continued through college and graduate school where she was strongly influenced by the colors and themes of western and eastern art.

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.