On January 3rd...

106 BC - Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher, is born.
1496 - Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.
1521 - Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.
1698 - Pietro Metastasio, Italian poet and librettist, is born.
1785 - Baldassare Galuppi, Italian composer, dies.
1806 - Henriette Sontag, German soprano, is born.
1882 - William Harrison Ainsworth, English novelist, dies.
1892 - J. R. R. Tolkien, British writer, is born.
1899 - The first known use of the word automobile, was seen in an editorial in The New York Times.
1923 - Jaroslav Hasek, Czech novelist, dies.
1924 - English explorer Howard Carter discovers the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt.
1925 - Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy.
1929 - Sergio Leone, Italian director, is born.
1945 - Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, Polish writer, dies.
1956 - Alexander Gretchaninov, Russian composer, dies.

 

 

Well Said

"Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden."
Voltaire
Letter to Pierre-Joseph François Luneau de Boisjermain

 

 

Recent Additions

 

 


Noteworthy
January 3rd, 2009

 

Parable of the Artist at his Writing Desk

By Rembrandt van Rijn


The Artist in his Studio
1626 to 1628
Oil on canvas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Parable of the Rich Man
1627
Oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

St. Paul at his Writing Desk
1629 to 1630
Oil on wood
Germanisches 
Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

 

Poor Folk (1846)

By Fyodor DosteovskyPierre-Auguste Renoir, Dans le jardin (In the Garden), 1885" style="width: 227px; height: 350px; float: right;" class="PopBoxImageSmall" title="Click to magnify/shrink" onclick="Pop(this,50,'/');"/>

MY DEAREST BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,— How happy I was last night—how immeasurably, how impossibly happy! That was because for once in your life you had relented so far as to obey my wishes. At about eight o'clock I awoke from sleep (you know, my beloved one, that I always like to sleep for a short hour after my work is done)—I awoke, I say, and, lighting a candle, prepared my paper to write, and trimmed my pen. Then suddenly, for some reason or another, I raised my eyes—and felt my very heart leap within me! For you had understood what I wanted, you had understood what my heart was craving for. Yes, I perceived that a corner of the curtain in your window had been looped up and fastened to the cornice as I had suggested should be done; and it seemed to me that your dear face was glimmering at the window, and that you were... more

 

Scenes from Childhood

By Robert Schumann

 
(1:29)..

V.
Happiness
Donald Betts
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(0:43)..

IX.
Knight of the Hobbyhorse
Donald Betts
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(2:00)..

XII.
Child Falling Asleep
Donald Betts
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Théodore Chassériau, The Ghost of Banquo, 1854"/>Macbeth

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, your murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, "Hold, hold!" more

 

Today's Gesamtkunstwerk

500 years of women in Western art set to Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma.

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