Not the same ...

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” 

Heraclitus

 

 

Midnight sun ...

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes.

Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

Haruki Murakami

 

 

The Blue Dancers by Edgar Degas

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”


Albert Einstein

 

 

Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”

Elizabeth Gilbert

In our minds ...

“After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart ... and we can only repossess them in our minds.”

James Baldwin

Portrait of Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo Da Vinci

Ginevra de' Benci (1457–c. 1520) was an aristocrat from 15th-century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of a portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is known from three written sources that Leonardo painted a portrait of Ginevra de' Benci in 1474, possibly to commemorate her marriage that year to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini at the age of 16. The painting's imagery and the text on the reverse of the panel support the identification of this picture. Directly behind the young lady in the portrait is a juniper tree. The reverse of the portrait is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT ("beauty adorns virtue"). The Italian word for juniper is "ginepro", which suggests that the juniper motif was used here as a symbolic pun on Ginevra's name. Fittingly, juniper was also a Renaissance symbol for chastity. 

A strip from the bottom of the painting was removed in the past, presumably due to damage, and Ginevra's arms and hands were lost.

It is believed Ginevra's hands removed from the painting were inspired on Verocchio's Portrait of a Woman sculpture. Leonardo was Verocchio's apprentice when young and had an opportunity to see this work very closely.

Portrait of a Woman by Verocchio

Below is one of Leonardo's sketches of  hands today in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, it exemplifies Leonardo's intense attention to, even fascination with, anatomical correctness and the effects of light and shadow. At the bottom, one hand is folded underneath another, more developed one, as if resting in a lap. That lightly-sketched hand seems to be the ghost of the top hand, which holds a sprig of some sort of plant, the outline of the thumb is nearly identical. These two highly developed hands are worked up with dark crosshatching and white chalk highlights, creating a sense of mass even on a sheet of paper. In each, everything from the muscles of thumb-pads to the wrinkles of skin along the joints of the fingers is depicted with the utmost care. Even when Leonardo lightly sketches the rest of the forearm or the "ghost" hand, his lines are deft and confident, showing how much he strove to depict the human form correctly.

This is a simulation on how the portrait would look like if it had not had its bottom part removed.

“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
― Leonardo da Vinci