MayFlower

From thy fragrant, beauteous bosom,
I accept and clasp the treasure,
To my breast with grateful pleasure,
Dear the gift, and dear the giver,
Whose loving hand is near me ever,
Memory ever fondly clinging,
To the past, before me bringing,
With deepest sweetest fascination,
Past scenes of love and admiration.

Art by: MainLoop
Model: Rivi Madison
Poem (portion): The May Flower
Poet: Janet Hamilton
Poem Provided by: CZ

Harun Al-Rashid Receiving A Delegation Of Charlemagne In Baghdad

Harun al-Rashid (Arabic: هارون الرشيد‎}; Hārūn ar-Rashīd) (17 March 763 or February 766 — 24 March 809) was the fifth Abbasid Caliph.

His surnametranslates to “the Just”, “the Upright”, or “the Rightly-Guided”. Al-Rashid ruled from 786 to 809, during the peak of the Islamic Golden Age.

His time was marked by scientific, cultural, and religious prosperity. Islamic art and musicalso flourished significantly during his reign. He established the legendary library Bayt al-Hikma (“House of Wisdom”) in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, and during his rule Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge, culture and trade.

Charlemagne (/ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; 2 April 742/747/748 – 28 January 814),also known as Charles the Great (German: Karl der Große; Latin: Carolus or Karolus Magnus) or Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of Italy from 774, and from 800 the first emperor in western Europe since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state he founded is called the Carolingian Empire.

The oldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, Charlemagne became king in 768 following the death of his father. He was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. Carloman’s sudden death in 771 under unexplained circumstances left Charlemagne as the undisputed ruler of the Frankish Kingdom. Charlemagne continued his father’s policy towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in northern Italy, and leading an incursion into Muslim Spain.

He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, Christianizing them upon penalty of death, at times leading to events such as the Massacre of Verden.

Charlemagne reached the height of his power in 800 when he was crowned “emperor” by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day at Old St. Peter’s Basilica.

Called the “Father of Europe” (pater Europae), Charlemagne united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of cultural and intellectual activity within the Catholic Church. Both the French and German monarchies considered their kingdoms to be descendants of Charlemagne’s empire.

Charlemagne died in 814, having ruled as emperor for just over thirteen years. He was laid to rest in his imperial capital of Aachen in what is today Germany. His son Louis the Pious succeeded him.

Artist: Julius Köckert
Date: 1864
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Location: Maximilianeum Foundation, Munich, Germany
Info via: Wikipedia
Info provided by: CZ

Final Moments

There’s nothing more evocative than the sight of a lioness at full charge. The raw essence of power and focus!

By Fuz-Caforio-Art

Evening Light

By Ann Marie Bone

Embroidery Girl

By MingYouXu
Note: Part of the Mongolian Series
Oil on Canvas

Beauty

Please, Watch in full screen!

A path of sighs through the emotions of life.
A tribute to the art and her disarming beauty.

CREDITS

Director: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

Assistant Director: LAILA SONSINO

2nd Assistant Director: CARLOTTA BALESTRIERI

Editing - Compositing - Animation: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

Sound Design: ENRICO ASCOLI

Art Direction: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

Historiographer: GIULIANO CORTI

Time: 09'49"

Year: 2014

Thanks: MA&PA, ANNA, RAFFAELLA, CORRADO, VINICIO BORDIN, PAOLO RANIERI, KARMACHINA, ALBERTO MODIGNANI, AUGUSTA DESIRE GRECCHI, PAOLO BAZZANI, THOMAS MCEVOY

Video Website:
rinostefanotagliafierro.com/beauty.html

Los Angeles 1930

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. A child, or a book, or a painting, or a house, or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way, so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it, into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.

Art by: Leonid Afremov
Quote by: Ray Bradbury
Quote provided by: CZ

The Beautiful Colors Of Autumn

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.”

Unknown Artist
Quote by Emily Bronte
Quote provided by CZ
Location: Upstate New York

There Alone

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.

Art by WildWeasel339
Quote by Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Quote provided by CZ

Autumn Fire

Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer’s loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.

Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time’s deceit.

Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.

Beyond the pearled horizons lie
Winter and night: awaiting these
We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
Beneath the drear November trees.

Art by: Ann Marie Bone
Poem: Autumnal
Poem by: Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson
Poem provided by: CZ

Fall 2013

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language–not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.

By JJ Peabody
Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quote provided by CZ

Lakota Man

The Lakota people (pronounced [laˈkˣota]; also known as Teton, Titunwan (“prairie dwellers”), Teton Sioux are an indigenous people of the Great Plains of North America. They are part of a confederation of seven related Sioux tribes, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ or seven council fires, and speak Lakota, one of the three major dialects of the Sioux language.

The Lakota are the westernmost of the three Siouan language groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota. The seven bands or “sub-tribes” of the Lakota are:

- Sičháŋǧu (Brulé, Burned Thighs)
- Oglála (“They Scatter Their Own”)
- Itázipčho (Sans Arc, Without Bows)
- Húŋkpapȟa (“End Village”, Camps at the End of the Camp Circle)
- Mnikȟówožu (“Plant beside the Stream”, Planters by the Water)
- Sihásapa (“Black Feet”)
- Oóhenuŋpa (Two Kettles)

Notable persons include:

- Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull) from the Húnkpapȟa band;
- Touch the Clouds from the Miniconjou band;
- Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse),
- Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud),
- Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk),
- Siŋté Glešká (Spotted Tail),
- Billy Mills from the Oglala band.

[Info via: Wikipedia... Provided by CZ]

By Erik-Stitt

Total Being

Because two bodies, naked and entwined,
Leap over time, they are invulnerable,
Nothing can touch them, they return to the source.
There is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
No yesterday, no names, the truth of two
In a single body, a single soul,
Oh total being.

Poem by: Octavio Paz

Art: Passion

Art by: Leonid Afremov

A Magic Moment I Remember

A magic moment I remember:

I raised my eyes and you were there,

A fleeting vision, the quintessence

Of all that's beautiful and rare.

I pray to mute despair and anguish,

To vain the pursuits world esteems,

Long did I hear your soothing accents,

Long did your features haunt my dreams. 

Time passed. A rebel storm-blast scattered

The reveries that once were mine

And I forgot your soothing accents,

Your features gracefully divine. 

In dark days of enforced retirement

I gazed upon grey skies above

With no ideals to inspire me

No one to cry for, live for, love. 

Then came a moment of renaissance,

I looked up - you again are there

A fleeting vision, the quintessence

Of all that's beautiful and rare.

Poem by: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

Art: A Pensive Moment

Art by DANIEL RIDGWAY KNIGHT

(1839 - 1924) 

Hylas and The Nymphs

So the nymphs they spoke,
We kissed and laid.
By noontime’s hour
Our love was made.

Like braided chains of crocus stems,
We lay entwined, I laid with them.
Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,
Our bodies draping wearily,
We slept, I slept so lucidly,
With hopes to stay this memory. 

Poem by Roman Payne, 
Rooftop Soliloquy
Art: Hylas and The Nymphs
Art by John William Waterhouse

Karol Bak's Art

Music: Love In Spain
Artist: Ypey

At Her Window

BEATING Heart! we come again
  Where my Love reposes;
This is Mabel’s window-pane;
  These are Mabel’s roses.

Is she nested? Does she kneel
  In the twilight stilly,
Lily clad from throat to heel,
  She, my virgin Lily?

Soon the wan, the wistful stars,
  Fading, will forsake her;
Elves of light, on beamy bars,
  Whisper then, and wake her.

Let this friendly pebble plead
  At her flowery grating;
If she hear me will she heed?
  Mabel, I am waiting.

Mabel will be deck’d anon,
  Zoned in bride’s apparel;
Happy zone! O hark to yon
  Passion-shaken carol!

Sing thy song, thou tranced thrush,
  Pipe thy best, thy clearest;—
Hush, her lattice moves, O hush—
  Dearest Mabel!—dearest…

Poem by: Frederick Locker-Lampson
(1821-1895)

Painting: Woman At Her Window
By Ágost Elek Canzi,
Austro-Hungarian painter
(1808-1866)
Oil on canvas 19,29 x 14,57 inches
Via: WikiMedia