Józef Pankiewicz | Il primo colorista Polacco

Józef Pankiewicz (Lublino 1866 - La Ciotat, Bouches-du-Rhône, 1940), è stato un pittore Polacco ed artista grafico, influenzato a Parigi (1889) dall'impressionismo, che introdusse in Polonia.

Pankiewicz ha ricevuto la sua formazione presso l'Accademia d'arte da Varsavia, con Wojciech Gerson ed Alexander Kamiński.

Con il suo amico Władysław Podkowiński poi è andato a San Pietroburgo e vi studiò nel 1885-1886 all'Accademia d'arte.

Marc Chagall | Les Paysans, 1971

The wondrous vitality of Chagall's imagination, as youthfully whimsical and impetuous as ever, empowered him in his late paintings to become - like Picasso, notwithstanding the strong differences in their backgrounds and temperament - the impresario, auteur, director and a leading player in a lively theater of memory. Just as Picasso drew heavily on his ancestral Mediterranean roots, so Chagall became the artificer of a pictorial realm based on multiple personal mythologies he had evolved for himself as the proverbial Wandering Jew.

Sir Frederic William Burton | Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864

The subject is taken from a medieval Danish ballad translated by Burton’s friend Whitley Stokes in 1855, which tells the story of Hellelil, who fell in love with her personal guard Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland.

Her father disapproved of the relationship and ordered her seven brothers to kill the young prince.

Rembrandt | Old Woman Cutting Her Nails,1655-60

Once well known as a Rembrandt🎨, this large canvas has also been attributed to the master's pupil, Nicolaes Maes (1643-1693), and to Abraham van Dijck (ca. 1635?-1680?).

The two artists were closely associated in Dordrecht, the southern Dutch city from which several Rembrandt🎨 followers came.

Whatever its authorship, the painting must date from about 1655-60.

Othello and Desdemona's painting

Desdemona (The Song of the Willow) is based on a print, part of a suite of etchings by Chassériau illustrating Shakespeare’s Othello, which was published in Paris in 1844.

It depicts act 4, scene 3 of the play, a final moment of calm preceding Desdemona’s murder by her husband, Othello.

Desdemona’s maid, Emilia, who was complicit in orchestrating the crime, shrinks away, cringing at the knowledge of what is about to occur.

The lyre Desdemona holds was not described by Shakespeare; Chassériau observed it in an 1836 production in which the role was performed by the celebrated singer Maria Malibran Garcia (1808–1836), called La Malibran. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Théodore Chassériau | Desdemona (The Song of the Willow) 1849 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Moise Kisling | Pittore post-impressionista

Moïse Kisling, nato Mojżesz Kisling (Cracovia, 22 gennaio 1891 - Sanary-sur-Mer, 29 aprile 1953), è stato un pittore Polacco naturalizzato francese. La più ampia raccolta delle opere di Kisling è esposta al Museo del Petit Palais di Ginevra.

Nato e cresciuto a Cracovia in una famiglia ebraica ashkenazita, studiò presso la Scuola delle Belle Arti, dove fattosi notare per il suo talento venne incoraggiato a trasferirsi a Parigi, il centro della creatività artistica dell'epoca. Nel 1910 dimorò nel quartiere di Montmartre per poi trasferirsi, qualche anno più tardi, a Montparnasse.

Allo scoppio della Prima guerra mondiale, si arruolò volontario nella Legione straniera, così come l'artista italiano Ugo Giannattasio, e nel 1915 rimase gravemente ferito al petto nella battaglia della Somme, motivo per il quale fu premiato con la cittadinanza francese.

Luigi Rossi | Symbolist / Genre painter

A Swiss painter Luigi Rossi (1853-1923) was born in Cassarate, Lugano. Having studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Giuseppe Bertini, Rossi made his artistic debut in 1871, inaugurating a repertoire of Genre scenes🎨 with a subtle vein of social criticism that was to be a distinctive feature of his work.