Rabindranath Tagore | O Woman / Donna!

O woman, you are not merely the

handiwork of God, but also of men;

these are ever endowing you with

beauty from their hearts.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) | Judith II Salomè, 1909 (detail)

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) | Quotes / Aforismi

Alexandre Dumas | Alì Pascià (novel), 1840 | Painting by Emil Jacobs (1802-1866) Ali Pasha and Kira Vassiliki, 1844

"There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever".

"Ci sono due modi di vedere: con il corpo e con l'anima. La vista del corpo a volte può dimenticare, ma l'anima ricorda per sempre".

"As a general rule…people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it".

"In generale, si chiedono consigli solo per non seguirli o, se si seguono, è per avere qualcuno da rimproverare per averli dati".

Charles Baudelaire / Roberto Ferri | Tristezze della luna

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,

Like a beauty who on many cushions rests,

And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,

Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

Roberto Ferri | Tristezze della luna

Cesare Pavese | Agony / Agonia, 1933

Frantz Charlet (Belgian Impressionist painter, 1862-1928) | A promenade in Vonaco

I’ll wander the streets till I’m dead tired,

I’ll learn to live alone and look each passing face

straight in the eye and still be what I am.

This coolness ascending in me, searching through my veins,

is an awakening each morning that I’ve never felt

so real -except that I feel stronger

than my body, and a colder shiver comes each morning now.

The mornings I had at twenty are now far: away.

And tomorrow, twenty-one: tomorrow I’ll go out in tile

streets -

I remember every stone, and the layers of the sky.

Salvatore Quasimodo | Alleyway / Vicolo

Sometimes your voice calls to me,

and I do not know what skies

or waters you wake me to:

A net of sunlight that glazes

your walls that at evening were

a swaying of late lanterns

in the workshops filled

with the breeze and sadness.

Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901)| Il ghetto di Firenze, 1892

Pablo Neruda: Never Blame Anyone / Non incolpare nessuno!

Sarolta Ban (Hungarian artist, 1982)

Never complain about anyone, nor anything,

because basically you have done

what you wanted in your life.

Accept the difficulty of improving yourself

and the courage to start changing yourself.

The triumph of the true man emerges from

the ashes of his mistake.

Non incolpare nessuno,

non lamentarti mai di nessuno, di niente,

perché in fondo

Tu hai fatto quello che volevi nella vita.

Accetta la difficoltà di costruire te stesso

ed il valore di cominciare a correggerti.

Il trionfo del vero uomo

proviene delle ceneri del suo errore.

Edgar Lee Masters | Silence / Il silenzio

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist.

He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness, An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man and Illinois Poems.

In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay and Walt Whitman.

Lucien Lévy Dhurmer (French Art Nouveau painter, 1865-1953) | Le Silence, 1895 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Rabindranath Tagore | Al risveglio

Govanni Boldini🎨 | La lettera mattutina

---

Al risveglio ho trovato

con la luce una lettera.

Ma non posso sapere

che dice: non so leggere.

E non voglio distrarre

un sapiente dai libri:

ciò che c’è scritto forse

non lo saprebbe leggere.

I woke and found his letter with the morning.

I do not know what it says, for I cannot read.

I shall leave the wise man alone with his books,

I shall not trouble him, for who knows if he can read what the letter says.

E. E. Cummings | I carry your heart with me / Il tuo cuore lo porto con me, 1958

Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901)🎨 | Settignano, Rendez vous in the woods, 1873

I carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling).

Il tuo cuore lo porto con me (lo porto

nel mio) non me ne divido mai (dove vado io

vieni anche tu, mia amata; e qualsiasi cosa

sia fatta da me, la fai anche tu, mia diletta).

E. E. Cummings | Lady, i will touch you with my mind / Signora, ti toccherò con la mia mente..

Jon Boe Paulsen🎨, 1958 | The Blue Hour

Lady, i will touch you with my mind.

touch you and touch and touch

until you give

me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene

(lady i will

touch you with my mind.)

Touch

you,that is all,

lightly and you utterly will become

with infinite care

the poem which i do not write.

Cesare Pavese / Pino Daeni | In the morning you always come back, 1950

Dawn’s faint breath

breathes with your mouth

at the ends of empty streets.

Gray light your eyes,

sweet drops of dawn

on dark hills.

Your steps and breath

like the wind of dawn

smother houses.

The city shudders,

Stones exhale -

you are life, an awakening.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) | Quotes

Marie Alexandre Valentin Sellier (French, 19th/20th Century) | La farandole de Pétrarque, 1900

• "Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good".

• "L'amore è la grazia incoronante dell'umanità, il diritto più santo dell'anima, il legame d'oro che ci lega al dovere e alla verità, il principio redentrice che principalmente riconcilia il cuore con la vita ed è profetico del bene eterno".

Proust and Johannes Vermeer

"By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished.

Henri Matisse: Creativity takes courage!

• "There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted" - Henri Matisse.
• "Penso che nulla sia più difficile per un vero pittore che dipingere una rosa, perché per dipingerla deve dimenticare tutte le rose che ha dipinto prima" - Henri Matisse.

Jerrard Gems | Vintage flower

"Perfumes are the feelings of flowers".
"I profumi sono i sentimenti dei fiori" - Heinrich Heine

"I paint flowers so they will not die".
"Dipingo i fiori così che non moriranno" - Frida Kahlo

"A flower blossoms for its own joy".
"Un fiore sboccia per la sua stessa gioia" - Oscar Wilde

Camille Corot: "Be guided by feeling alone. We are only simple mortals, subject to error"

• "Don't imitate, don't follow the others, or else you will lag behind them".

• "Non imitare, non seguire gli altri, altrimenti resterai indietro".

• "Nessuno mi ha mai insegnato: il mio istinto mi spinge e io gli obbedisco".

Marc Chagall | Between Darkness and Light, 1938-1943

"I don't know where he (Marc Chagall) gets those images; he must have an angel in his head".

"Non so dove (Marc Chagall) ottenga quelle immagini; deve avere un angelo in testa".

Pablo Picasso

John Singer Sargent: "The thicker you paint, the more it flows"

• "Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina".

• "Impressionismo" è il nome che è stato dato ad una certa forma di osservazione quando Monet, non contento di usare gli occhi per vedere le cose o il loro aspetto come tutti gli altri avevano fatto prima di lui, ha posto la sua attenzione su ciò che accadeva nella sua retina, così come un oculista avrebbe esaminato la propria vista".

Rumi: Ben oltre le idee di giusto e sbagliato c'è un campo. Laggiù ti aspetterò!

Jules-Joseph Lefebvre🎨 (French painter, 1836-1912) Graziella

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

and rightdoing there is a field.

I'll meet you there..

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about"!

Milan Kundera | Quotes / Aforismi

Rene Magritte (Belgian Surrealist painter, 1898-1967) | Les Amants / The Lovers

• "..No one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it".

• "Contro i sentimenti siamo disarmati, poiché esistono e basta - e sfuggono a qualunque censura. Possiamo rimproverarci un gesto, una frase, ma non un sentimento: su di esso non abbiamo alcun potere".