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cinema paradiso (1988), giuseppe tornatore
bacchus (2010), cy twombly
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“Tu sei veramente una fiamma che scalda ma bisogna proteggere dal vento. A volte non so se un mio gesto tende a scaldarmi o a proteggerti. Anzi allora m'immagino di fare le due cose insieme e questa è tutta la mia e la tua tenerezza come una cosa sola. Di scaldarmi soltanto, avrei orrore. Ma se non posso farlo, se tu hai sonno, vorrei essere almeno la mano che ti protegge – una cosa che non ho mai saputo fare con nessuno e con te invece mi è naturale come il respiro.”
— Cesare Pavese a Bianca Garufi, 21 ottobre 1945 da “Una bellissima coppia discorde. Il carteggio tra Bianca Garufi e Cesare Pavese (1945-1950)”, Olschki Editore, 2011.
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Lines of Flight op857, oil on canvas, 145.5 x 112cm, 2023
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silver cupid locket from the 1600s with the inscription "no heart more true than mine to you"
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Winged two tailed siren in the sky. Woodcut, Venice, 1537. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A Venetian woodcut shows a lovely example of the two tailed siren. The poet, Pietro Aretino, is shown as a shepherd, singing to the siren from the ground. The object of his affection, Angela Serena, is an ethereal winged siren, flying in the clouds. Stars circle her, and her two tails curve gracefully around her arms. Also, this was likely a play on her last name, and the word sirena, Italian for siren. While Aretino was notorious in the Renaissance for writing erotica, his verse to Angela is quite lovely:
“It is thanks to you, stars, that the lofty spheres, called the heavenly Sirens, not only granted her their name itself as an agreeable title, with beautiful proud notes; they even imprinted the sound of their perfect true harmonies on her clear and neat voice, with sublime sweetness, so that she speaks almost in the language of angels.”
Unfortunately, as Angela was married, this poem and woodcut caused her a great deal of issues.
In ancient Greek art, sirens are usually shown with bird bodies, and the Scythian ancestral goddess, who likely influenced two tailed siren imagery, is sometimes shown with wings.
Compare this poem with Petrach's Rime sparse, who also wrote verse about a woman, likening her to a siren.
Sources
For the poem, see pages 143-144: Calogero, Elena Laura. ""Sweet Alluring Harmony": Heavenly and Earthly Sirens in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Literary and Visual Culture." In Music of the Sirens, edited by Inna Naroditskaya and Linda Phyllis Austern, 140-75. Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006.
See also, the MET website:
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This lovely woodcut of an astrologer by Jorg Breu the Elder is taken from Andrea Alciato’s 1531 work, The Book of Emblems. Though it may not be immediately obvious, it’s yet another rendition of a morality tale I’ve shown in my feed before; namely, the Astrologer Who Fell Into a Well. Here, the astrologer trains his eyes intently on the heavens, but for all his knowledge gained there fails to see the well before him, and falls to his ruin. The story teaches an important lesson about keeping one’s eye on what truly matters, lest you find your distractions bring disaster, and we could probably all stand to heed its moral a bit. #astrology #astrologer #celestial #telescope #astrologie #zodiac #horoscope #occult #fortuneteller #wizard #sorcerer #theastrologerwhofellintoawell https://www.instagram.com/p/BuQ9mIHFa9I/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10amfwpqn3poj
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Dialogue by Lee UFAN
it looks like one single brushstroke. viewed up close it is many thin brushstrokes, painted numerous times against each other.
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Juan Uslé, Notas para Soñé que revelabas, (watercolor on paper), 2011-2018 [Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris. © Juan Uslé]
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