Meeting Benches World art in all forms

Landscape painting is the depiction in art of landscapes (such as mountains and valleys, trees, rivers and forests), with its elements inside coherent composition. The history of Roman painting is essentially a history of wall paintings on plaster, and it is thanks to the ancient Roman city of Pompeii that we can trace the history of Roman wall painting. Until …

Under a blanket of stars Roma looks beautiful to me. Lonely my heart, disillusioned of love, wants to sing in the shadow. A fountain wetsuit, and a balcony up there, oh Roman guitar, you accompany me. Plays, plays my guitar, letting crying my heart, without a home and without love, only you remain to me. If the voice is a …

When your geographical horizon extends – for business or pleasure – you have the wonderful opportunity to hear you inside, like the perfectly proportioned man (created by Leonardo da Vinci), correlating the symmetry of human anatomy to the symmetry of the universe. What you see, hear, eat and feel, it’s all inside the Vitruvian approach to life. Ancient Roman Music …

The word “Pantheon” is a Greek adjective, meaning “honor all Gods”. The Roman Pantheon is the most preserved and influential building of ancient Rome. It is a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods of pagan Rome. The exact composition of the material is still unknown and appears to be structurally similar to modern day concrete. The 16 massive Corinthian …

We visit Rome every year for a few days, and our first port of call is always Hostaria Pantheon: the food is gorgeous, the view is astounding while you sit and have a cold glass of wine, but above all the staff are brilliant (Franco, Nico and the rest of the staff make you feel so welcome). They want that …

The “Sistine Chapel“, dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, is one of the most famous cultural and artistic treasures of the Vatican City, inserted in the path of the Vatican Museums. The chapel was built in 1479 under the direction of Pope Sixtus IV, who gave it his name. The location of the building is very close to St. …

Among the Roman dialect poets, Trilussa (1871/1950), is by far the most well-known and appreciated outside his own hometown. His mature work falls broadly into two types (sonnets and fables), however, it wasat the poetic fable that Trilussa truly excelled, developing a distinctly cynical Roman version (of the genre of Aesop and La Fontaine). Among his many artistic merits, he …

ZHANG JING SHENG 1/3 – Zhang Jing Sheng is a devoted painter who for many years studied color. In 1967, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Central Fine Arts Academy. He is a professor and tutor for graduate students at the Tianjin Fine Arts Academy. He tried to reveal the intensity of color, often working with a palette …

For more than a century and a half, Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels (a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world’s great civilizations). Written in the mid-18th century, Dream of the Red Chamber was the last of the four great novels of Chinese literature …

THINGS GET REARRANGED – The world changes subtly as it goes around. The morning coffee aroma feels like the glow from a honeycomb, while outside the window the olive grove still soaks in the twilight mist. Tiny footsteps follow faint sounds to distant places, but the fisherman has returned and is sitting in the courtyard, watching a bird foraging in …

Published in the 14th century, The Water Margin introduced the vernacular form and style which the others would adhere to. The novel is set in the Song dynasty and depicts a group of outlaws who eventually go on to serve the Emperor in battling foreign invaders. It was based on the real life story of the outlaw Song Jiang, who …

LETTER TO A FRIEND – Let me tell you about these sheep. In many ways they are like the ocean creatures you know so well: in the benevolence of the creator, they bear children, each has a face of a lad or an old man. These days they are on the hills, a tight flock, a warm flock, with a …

Leave me alone, novel of Chengdu (historically, Chengdu has been the center of China’s food culture, and is famous for its laid-back lifestyle), is an unflinching, darkly funny take on love and life in modern China. It’s the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, …

THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Wumeng likes to sing after a few drinks, and he always sings the same old song. I’ve heard it many times, but still can’t remember a word of it. Wumeng dreams of building his own empire, calling it The Great Yunnan Kingdom, but the soberer he gets, the more his empire looks like a castle …