Robert Schumann: "Talent works, genius creates"!

• "Art was not created as a way to riches. Strive to become a true artist; all else will take care of itself".

• "Only if the form is first clear to you will the spirit then reveal itself".

• "To compose is to remember music that has never been written".

• "When you play, never mind who listens to you".

• "Andare lento e correre sono errori di pari gravità".

• "Il musicista colto potrà studiare una Madonna di Raffaello con la stessa utilità con cui il pittore studierà una sinfonia di Mozart... L'estetica di un'arte è quella delle altre, soltanto il materiale è diverso".

Gustave Adolphe Mossa (1883-1971) | Clara and Robert Schumann

Frants Henningsen | Genre painter

Frants Peter Diderik Henningsen (Copenhagen, 1850-1908) was a Danish painter, illustrator and professor.

His paintings depict unfortunate occurrences in the lives of middle-class people living in Copenhagen during difficult times.

His connections with Denmark's more traditional, realist school encouraged criticism from many of his more reactionary contemporaries, especially Karl Madsen who objected to his appointment as a professor at the Academy in 1887.

Johann Sebastian Bach: "La musica aiuta a non sentire dentro il silenzio che c’è fuori"!

• "Tre cose sono necessarie per un buon pianista: la testa, il cuore e le dita".

• "La perfezione si raggiunge per gradi".

• "Ai miei occhi ed alle mie orecchie l’organo è il re di tutti gli strumenti".

• "La musica non è nelle note, la musica è tra le note".

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• "Buffone è chi non ride mai".

• "Ogni difficoltà su cui si sorvola, diventa un fantasma che turberà i nostri sonni".

Johann Sebastian Bach (1714-1788), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) e Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Léon Pilet | Un Coup de vent, 1888

Léon Pilet (1836-1916) was a French sculptor and medalist, known for his classical subjects in bronze.

Pilet also produced male and female figurines from clay, marble and ivory. Many of his works depict religious as well as historical figures.

Pilet presented "Le Coup de vent" during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1888, now at the Musée Granet - Aix-en-Provence.

The artist continued to exhibit at the Salon from 1861 to 1914.

Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915)

Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian impressionist painter.

After studying at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, Fox travelled to Paris to study in 1886 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and École des Beaux-Arts (1887-90), where his masters included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme, both among the most famous artists of the time.

Giorgos Seferis | A word for Summer / Una parola sull'Estate, 1936

We’ve returned to autumn again; summer,

like an exercise book we’re tired of writing in, remains

full of deletions, abstract designs,

question marks in the margin; we’ve returned

to the season of eyes gazing

into the mirror under the electric light

closed lips and people strangers

in rooms in streets under the pepper-trees

while the headlights of cars massacre

thousands of pale masks.

Isaac Levitan (Russian landscape painter, 1860-1900) | Spring in Italy

Atsushi Koyama, 1978 | Humans and Machines

Born in Tokyo, Atsushi Koyama / 小山 篤 is a visual artist from Japan. He holds both a BFA in art from Tama Art University and a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tokyo University of Science in 2008.

Koyama’s work clearly uses the backgrounds of his tutelage as he beautifully blends anatomical illustration with mechanical diagrams.

METAMACHINE is his collaborative project at the border of visual art and electronic music.

Although the meaning behind these oil paintings by Atsushi Koyama is somewhat ambiguous, it’s easy to appreciate the exactness of his paintbrush that colorfully and elegantly depicts mechanical diagrams mixed with anatomical illustrations.

Mozart: "The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between"

• "A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place".

• "Un uomo di talento ordinario sarà sempre ordinario, che viaggi o no; ma un uomo di talento superiore andrà in pezzi se rimane per sempre nello stesso posto".

• "Melody is the essence of music".

• "La melodia è l'essenza della musica".

Barbara Krafft | Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1819 (detail)