Edward Moran | Marine painter

Edward Moran (1829-1901) was an British-born American artist who specialized in marine art.

He is arguably most famous for his series of 13 historical paintings of United States marine history.

Vincenzo Cardarelli | Autunno veneziano /Venetian Autumn, 1931

L'alito freddo e umido m'assale

di Venezia autunnale,

Adesso che l'estate,

sudaticcia e sciroccosa,

d'incanto se n'è andata,

una rigida luna settembrina

risplende, piena di funesti presagi,

sulla città d'acque e di pietre

che rivela il suo volto di medusa

contagiosa e malefica.

Marco Ortolan | The Venetian Mask

Henri Lebasque | Pittore post-impressionista

Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) fu membro fondatore del Salon d'Automne nel 1903 con il suo amico Henri Matisse ed espose al Salon des Indépendants.

Nacque in una famiglia modesta (il padre era bottaio) e si iscrisse all'Académie Colarossi nel 1886.

In seguito collaborò con Ferdinand Humbert agli affreschi del Panthéon per sei anni, a partire dal 1888.

Agnolo Bronzino | Mannerist painter

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1563) of Florence, Italy, known as Il Bronzino, was a Mannerist painter.

Mixing styles of the late High Renaissance into the early Baroque period, Mannerists often depicted their subjects in unnatural forms.

Bronzino’s works have been described as “icy” portraits that put an abyss between the subject and the viewer.

Cristina Fornarelli, 1978 | Pop Art painter

Cristina Fornarelli is an Italian contemporary figurative painter.

Fornarelli was born in Bari, in Southern Italy where light and colors have influenced her art.

After art school, she attended the Institute of Industrial Design in Rome, where she still lives and works.

Michelle Torrez, 1956 | Abstract painter

Known for her color work, Michelle Torrez does expressionistic oil paintings of figures that are intended to communicate the beauty of unlikely emotion, movement and life.

Torrez believes that the greatest influences on her work were the circumstances of her childhood and teenage years:

"My life has influenced me to look deeper to find the beauty and humanity in people and places. Even at an early age, I knew I was an artist".

Vincent van Gogh | Sunflowers series

Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

The earlier series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, executed a year later in Arles, shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase.

In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions.

Vincent van Gogh | Sunflowers, 1887 | National Gallery, London

The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo's masterpiece, 1508-1512

Julius II's decision to completely renovate the decoration of the Ceiling was probably due to the serious problems of a static nature that affected the Sistine Chapel from the earliest years of his pontificate (1503-1513).

They must have been the result of the excavations carried out both to the north and to the south of the building for the construction of the Borgia Tower and for the new St Peter's.

After a long crack had opened in the Ceiling in May 1504, Bramante, then the Palace architect, was charged with finding a solution and he fixed some tie rods in the area above the Chapel.

However, the damage suffered by the old painting must have been such as to convince the pontiff to entrust Michelangelo with a new pictorial decoration.