Alexei Antonov, 1957 | Still life painter

Aлексей Антонов is a Russian artist who has studied art in Russia, Azerbaijan and Italy, and has been living in the US since 1990.

TAlexei Antonov has created a stunning collection of still life paintings that embody hyper realism and classic work of Renaissance masters.

Antonov was literally born an artist, began to draw, as he remembers - since the age of three.

The first drawings were made by mom’s lipstick, right on the wallpaper.

Love Letter from Balzac to Countess Ewelina Hańska

My beloved angel,

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them.

I can no longer think of nothing but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you.

I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

As for my heart, there you will always be - very much so. I have a delicious sense of you there.

But my God, what is to become of me, if you have deprived me of my reason?

Lorenzo Bartolini | Buste d'Ewelina Hańska, 1837 | Musée Bertrand, à Châteauroux, France

Cassie Phillips | Let them

If they want to choose something or someone over you,

Let them.

If they want to go weeks without talking to you,

Let them.

If they are okay with never seeing you,

Let them.

Jack Vettriano

Jacqueline Marval | The Female Fauve

Jacqueline Marval was the pseudonym for Marie Josephine Vallet (1866-1932), who was a French painter, lithographer and sculptor.

Vallet was born in Quaix-en-Chartreuse into a family of school teachers.

She was married in 1866, to a traveling salesperson, Albert Valentin, but separated from her husband in 1891 after the death of her son.

Cassie Phillips | Lasciali fare (La poesia)

Se vogliono scegliere qualcosa o qualcuno al posto tuo,

Lasciali fare.

Se vogliono passare settimane senza parlarti,

Lasciali fare.

Se stanno bene a non vederti mai,

Lasciali fare.

Se stanno bene a mettere sempre se stessi al primo posto,

Lasciali fare.

Jack Vettriano

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876

Bal du moulin de la Galette (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette) is doubtless Renoir's most important work of the mid 1870's and was shown at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877.

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)