Sandro Botticelli | Mystic Nativity / Natività mistica, 1501

The 'Mystic Nativity' shows angels and men celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. The Virgin Mary kneels in adoration before her infant son, watched by the ox and the ass at the manger. Mary's husband, Joseph, sleeps nearby. Shepherds and wise men have come to visit the new-born king. Angels in the heavens dance and sing hymns of praise. On earth they proclaim peace, joyfully embracing virtuous men while seven demons flee defeated to the underworld.

Sandro Botticelli | Calumny of Apelles / La calunnia di Apelle, 1496

The Calumny of Apelles is a tempera painting by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. Based on the description of a painting by Apelles, the work was completed in approximately 1494. It is on display in the Uffizi in Florence.

In The Calumny of Apelles, Botticelli drew on the description of a painting by Apelles, a Greek painter of the Hellenistic Period.

Edward Lamson Henry | Genre painter

Edward Lamson Henry (January 12, 1841 - May 9, 1919), commonly known as E.L. Henry, was an American genre painter, born in Charleston, South Carolina.

• Early life

Though born in Charleston, by age seven his parents had died and Henry moved to live with cousins in New York City. He began studying painting, there and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1860 he went to Paris, where he studied with Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet, at roughly the same time as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley.

Honoré de Balzac | Quotes / Aforismi

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

• A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
• There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
• True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.
• There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.
• Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

Dmitry Balahonov, 1971 | Saint Petersburgh painting

Dmitry Balahonov /Дмитрий Балахонов was born February 6, 1971. From early childhood, he studied at different art schools. In 1989 he graduated from art school in the city of Bobruisk, after serving in the army engaged in the work of a professional. Since 1992 he has been working independently in the Mogilev. In 1995, goes to live abroad, working with galleries in Tel Aviv, holds solo exhibitions. In 1999 he moved to live in Mogilev, actively cooperates with many galleries and salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg, Minsk.

Georgi Lapchine | Neo-Impressionist painter

Georgi (Georgy, Georges) Alexandrovich Lapchine / Георгий Александрович Лапшин (1885-1950) was born in Moscow. In the early 1900s Lapshin studied at the Stroganov School. In 1906-1909 he lived in Paris, studied with Cormon and J. F. Lhermitte.

Returning to Moscow, participated in the group exhibition of independence (1910), was the founder and permanent participant of "free art" (1911-1917).

In 1918-1922 works were exhibited in Moscow on the 1st and 2nd shows a picture of professional union painters in Moscow (1918), the 2nd National Exhibition of paintings (1919), the 47th exhibition TPHV (1922), as well as the 1st Russian art Exhibition in Berlin (1922). In 1924 he moved to Paris.

Carlo Russo, 1976 | Still life / Figurative painter

Carlo Russo was born in Philadelphia PA. He is currently based in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, where he maintains his studio and teaches painting and drawing in addition to creating his newest works. Carlo graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2004 where he focused his studies in the  methods and practices of traditional realism. Since his graduation, he has been a full-time artist and has exhibited his works in numerous galleries across the United States.

Anna Rose Bain, 1985 | Classical Realist painter

Anna Rose Bain was born and raised in rural Wisconsin. She began drawing from the moment she could pick up a pencil. Inspired by her grandfather, who started painting at the age of 70, she spent her free time as a child sketching from nature and poring over art books.

Anna studied art at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI, and graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and departmental honors. She was the first in the school's history to have a solo senior art exhibit. She refined her education at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, taking a figure painting class in the summer of 2006.

Margaret Zox Brown | Expressionist painter

- I grew up in Manhattan with summers at my family’s 18th century barn house on the eastern end of Long Island. Both environments are richly embedded in my being, affecting all my artwork for the past 28 years.

Having a natural and innate propensity for art, I inevitably gravitated towards it. I drew my entire life finding my subject matter in the faces of friends and relatives or the corners of my home practicing and perfecting the rendering of whatever I saw. Then when I was in my late 20’s I decided to treat myself to what seemed almost exotic; oil painting lessons. I immediately discovered color and art buyers immediately discovered me as an expressive, passionate colorist.

Margaret Thomas, 1916 | Abstract / Still life painter

Margaret Thomas was born in London on 26 September 1916. She was introduced to the world of artists, at the age of 12, by her governess Dora Salman who had been at the Slade with Ethel Walker before the Great War. She took Margaret to see Walker at her Thames-side studio and introduced her to other women artists such as Clare Atwood, Beatrice Bland and Eleanor Best.

Hugo Mühlig | Genre painter

Hugo Mühlig (1854-1929) was born in Dresden to a family of artists; his father Meno Mühlig (1823-1873)

was an accomplished Landscape and Genre painter, as was his uncle Bernhard Mühlig (1829-1910).

He was encouraged to follow suit and received his first artistic training from his father before studying at the Dresden Academy of Art between 1877-1880 under the illustrator Viktor Paul Mohn (1842-1911).

Andrew Gifford, 1970 | London painting

Andrew Gifford (b. Sheffield, 1970) is now recognised as one of the most innovative landscape painters working today.

His paintings and light installations have been widely exhibited, including solo public shows at Leeds City Art Gallery (2004), Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh (2001) and Middlesbrough Art Gallery (2000). Collections include the New Art Gallery, Walsall and Chatsworth House and in private collections in Europe, USA and Japan. A monograph on the artist was published in 2005.

Michael Bilotta | Conceptual Surrealist Photographer

Michael Bilotta is an award winning conceptual fine art photographer from the Boston area in the U.S.A. All work is 100% photographic and the imagery is created as layered composites in Photoshop. Michael has a winning entry in Canon’s Project Imagination 2012, and his work has appeared in Practical Photoshop magazine and is the April 2013 Photographer of the Month in the Italian publication JC and Art Elite.

Michael is the winner of Camera Obscura Journal's Outstanding Photo Award, Non-Professional category for his photo "Riddles In The Dark" as well as receiving Honorable Mention for "The Collective" in the Professional category.

David Piddock, 1960 | Magic Realism painter

David Piddock has shown in an extensive number of exhibitions across England including: 'Focus on Drawing', Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, the Spectator Open at Christie's, The Gallery in Cork Street, the 'Gallery Fiction' at The Fine Art Society, London, and 'New Acquisitions' at The Museum of London.

Piddock has also exhibited internationally in Centro Modigliani, Florence and Palm Beach Contemporary Art Fair, USA.

Pasquale Romanelli | Andromeda

"As soon as Perseus, great-grandson of Abas, saw her fastened by her arms to the hard rock, he would have thought she was a marble statue" – Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV

With Andromeda and the sea monster Romanelli chose a subject that had fascinated artists since the Renaissance. The myth is best known from Ovid’s dramatic account in his Metamorphoses. The poet tells of the Aethiopean princess, whose mother, Queen Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than Poseidon’s Nereids. Enraged, the god of the sea sent a monstrous sea creature to devastate the coast of their Aethiopean kingdom. The distraught King consulted the Oracle of Apollo for guidance, only to be told that he had to sacrifice his daughter to the monster to put an end to its rampage.

Pasquale Romanelli | Ruth

The Florentine sculptor Pasquale Romanelli achieved an international reputation for his finely carved mythological and biblical marble figures. Romanelli began his training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence under Luigi Pampaloni but was soon taught by the foremost Tuscan neoclassical sculptor, Lorenzo Bartolini. Remaining in Bartolini’s favour, he went on to become his collaborator and, upon the master’s death in 1850, the successor of his studio. Romanelli’s mythological and allegorical compositions were highly prized by a cosmopolitan clientele, and he exhibited select models in Paris.

Denise Henley | Portrait painter

Born in Guyana, South America, Denise Henley first realized her artistic passion at the tender age of eight. She spent much of her young life immersed in drawing.

As an adolescent, she moved to the United States to study art and after obtaining a B.A in Visual Arts, went on to pursue a career as an artist.

While she works in several mediums and subject-matters, her passion lies in capturing the beauty of the human figure. A constituent of realism, she continuously strives to perfect her drawing skills, believing it to be the backbone of the portrait process.

Balthus | Modern painter

Balthus, pseudonym of Balthazar Klossowski, also spelled Balthasar Klossowsky (born February 29, 1908, Paris, France - died February 18, 2001, La Rossinière, Switzerland), reclusive French painter who, in the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait.

He is best known for his controversial depictions of adolescent girls.

Eduard Gordeev | Impressionist Cityscape photographer

Eduard Gordeev /Эдуард Гордеев is a talented photographer who lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He creates artistic landscape photo series of his beloved city St. Petersburg.

These magnificent cityscape images look impressive and atmospheric with a bit of effect of acrylic paintings.

These urban streets seem drenched in mystery and rain.

His captures look as if they were acrylic paintings.

The reflections of city lights and all melting colors turn them into extraordinary pieces of art.

Vatican Light Show Calls Attention to Climate Change

Pope Francis inaugurated a special year of Mercy at the Vatican on Tuesday but fears of terrorism meant that the crowds in St Peter’s Square were much more modest than expected.

The Vatican had hoped that up to 100,000 people would take part in an open-air Mass in the huge Renaissance piazza, but in the end an estimated 40,000 people attended.

Pope Francis inaugurates special Year of Mercy.

Cornelia Hernes, 1979 | Classical Realist painter

Cornelia Hernes was born and raised in Norway until the age of twelve when her family moved to Africa where Cornelia went to boarding schools in Kenya and Tanzania. Much of her fascination with exploring the human condition through her paintings can be attributed to her early exposure to different cultures. Her work is centered on portraying and evoking a large scope of emotions, ultimately with the aim of celebrating life.

Maggie Taylor, 1961 | Digital Surrealist /Visionary painter

Maggie Taylor (born in Cleveland, Ohio) is an artist who works with digital images. She won the Santa Fe Center for Photography's Project Competition in 2004. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe and is represented within the permanent collections of several galleries and museums. She is the third wife of American photographer, Jerry Uelsmann.

She produces prints by scanning objects into a computer using a flatbed scanner, then layering and manipulating these images using Adobe Photoshop into a surrealistic montage.

Julius Olsson | Seascape painter

Albert Julius Olsson (1 February 1864 - 7 September 1942) was a British maritime artist and keen yachtsman.

He was born in Islington, London, to a Swedish father and an English mother. Olsson cruised with his yacht most summers, and The Studio (an illustrated fine arts and decorative arts magazine published in London from 1893 until 1964) commented: 'He knows the way from the Scillies to the Isle of Wight as most men know their way to the nearest railway station'.

He exhibited a painting of Newlyn in 1887, and sold a painting at Newlyn in 1897.

Henry Ossawa Tanner | Realist / Symbolist painter

Henry Ossawa Tanner, (born June 21, 1859, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.-died May 25, 1937, Paris, France), American painter who gained international acclaim for his depiction of landscapes and biblical themes.

After a childhood spent largely in Philadelphia, Tanner began an art career in earnest in 1876, painting harbour scenes, landscapes, and animals from the Philadelphia Zoo. In 1880 Tanner began two years of formal study under Thomas Eakins at Philadelphia’s prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he was the only African American.

Pablo Neruda / Maggie Taylor | Poetry / La poesia

And it was at that age... poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, not silence,

but from a street it called me,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among raging fires

or returning alone,

there it was, without a face,

and it touched me.

Georg Pauli | Symbolist /Cubist painter

Georg Vilhelm Pauli (2 July 1855 - 28 November 1935) was a Swedish painter.

Pauli was born in Jönköping. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1871-75 and 1878-79, and studied and worked in France and Italy for several years during the 1870s and 1880s.

He studied naturalist in- and outdoor painting, influenced by Bastien-Lepage. In 1887, he married Swedish painter Hanna Hirsch (1864-1940).

VR Morrison, 1976 | Figurative Realist painter

VR Morrison’s highly realistic and lavish paintings draw inspiration from classical painting traditions and allegorical subject matter which is mediated through the artist’s interest in popular culture, history and high fashion. This ultimately lends her paintings a fresh, contemporary edge and an often palpable, air of tension.

Born in Sydney Australia of Scottish, Samoan and Chinese heritage, VR Morrison ran away from school at the age of 15 to study fashion design.

Francis Picabia | Quotes / Aforismi

• La nostra testa è rotonda per permettere ai pensieri di cambiare direzione.
• Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.
• Notre tête est ronde pour permettre à la pensée de changer de direction.
• The devil follows me day and night because he is afraid to be alone.
• Il diavolo mi segue giorno e notte perché ha paura di essere solo.

Christiane Vleugels, 1963 | Timeless

Christiane Vleugels is a talented Traditional Artist from Belgium. Her giant Hyper realistic paintings seem to tell a story and invite you in for the experience.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Vleugels, see Christiane Vleugels, 1963 | Hyperrealist painter.

Hermin Abramovitch | Abstract photographer

Hermin Abramovitch is a talented photographer from Romania.

Currently living in Israel and working as a Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Manager at Harmonic at Harmonic. before he worked in Six Sigma Black Belt at GE Healthcare.

He studied at the Universitatea 'Politehnica' din Bucuresti, Romania.

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD).

Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in ancient Greece is the period of Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC.

Classical Greece began with the repelling of a Persian invasion by Athenian leadership. Because of conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered as the cradle of Western civilization.

Aaron Abraham Shikler | Portrait /Figurative painter

Aaron Abraham Shikler | Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1970

By William Grimesnov: - Aaron Abraham Shikler (1922-2015), an artist whose portraits of America’s economic, political and social elite included a brooding John F. Kennedy, a sorrowful Jacqueline Kennedy and a buoyant Ronald Reagan in jeans and work shirt, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

The death was confirmed by his daughter, Cathy Shikler van Ingen.

Mrs. Kennedy became an admirer of Mr. Shikler after seeing the paintings he had done of the children of the actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford, one of the president’s sisters. In 1967 she asked him to do pastel portraits of her children, Caroline and John, and a group portrait of all three. A commission to do official White House portraits of her and (a posthumous one) of her husband followed.

Marius Zabinski, 1956 | Cubist painter

Marius Zabinski began his career as a painter very early, immediately after completing four years of study at l'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Warsaw, Poland. His pictorial technique already revealed a remarkable eclecticism of styles. He is one of the rare kinds of artist in that from the beginning he was able to make a living from his paintings, unlike many others who become successful enough to do this only much later on in their careers.

Franck Ayroles, 1975 | Abstract /Mixed media painter

Franck Ayroles is a professional painter engaged with Maison des Artistes and is a member of the organization ADAGP. Franck Ayroles was born in Saint-Nazaire.

He worked as a chief decorator and made a film with the comedian Philippe Le Maire after his studies in advertising and film.

Thereafter, he decided to become entirely focused in his artwork.

Painting has since childhood always been the big passion in his life.

During the 80s, Franck Ayroles joined and won many competitions organized by TF1 in the TV program "Bonjour la France" hosted by Jean Claude Bourret.

Armando Barrios | Cubist / Abstract painter

Venezuelan Artist Armando Barrios (1920-1999) was born in Caracas in 1920. He entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1932. During Rómulo Gallegos management as education minister in the government of Eleazar Lopez Contreras, the institution was reformed in 1936 and changed its name to the School of Visual Arts and Applied Arts of Caracas. Antonio Edmundo Monsanto and other leading painters of the generation of the Fine Arts were called to direct and integrate their teaching staff.

Pietro Magni | The Reading Girl/ La Lettrice, 1856

Pietro Magni's marble statue The Reading Girl brought the Milanese sculptor international fame and recognition.

It was exhibited numerous times at international exhibitions throughout Europe and America, each time to great public and critical acclaim. Stylistically it owes much to the artistic tradition of verismo or "realism" that characterized Italian art during the middle years of the nineteenth century, but it also recalls earlier aspects of Italian romanticism.