Dear Reader,
June arrives like a held breath, the year at its most luminous, days stretched wide with light that lingers long past evening. It is a season of fullness, of color deepened by warmth, of shadows that fall long and golden across the afternoon. There is something in this light that changes how we see. Edges blur, contrasts mellow, and what once felt urgent yields to a quieter attentiveness. Like June itself, great art catches us at the threshold, between effort and ease, between the bloom and the ripening. This month’s selections invite you to dwell in that golden interval, to see with the unhurried eye of a long summer afternoon. May the light of this season find its way into your looking.
Featured Posts:
🌼 Monday, June 1: Flower & Artwork of the Month – The Honeysuckle, a token of love in the Victorian era – Discover Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Daydream, where Jane Morris reclines in a sycamore’s canopy, a spray of honeysuckle held loosely in her hand, June’s flower of the month woven naturally into one of the Pre-Raphaelite’s most luminous meditations on beauty, reverie, and the sensory stillness of midsummer.
👩 Thursday, June 4: Raphael and the stunning portrait of La Fornarina – Who is the beautiful woman who modestly tries to cover herself? Raphael left clues but no answers. Five centuries on, La Fornarina remains art history’s most captivating unsolved mystery. With the painting now travelling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for Raphael: Sublime Poetry, the original questions feel more alive than ever, and the mystery remains gloriously unsolved.
🐉 Tuesday, June 9: How does the myth of Orpheus enter the language of Christian imagery? – In Greek mythology, Orpheus, the Thracian citharoedus, enchanted all beings with the music of his lyre. In early Christian art, he is reimagined as an allegory of Christ, who draws souls through spiritual harmony. This sculpture, a table support from an Asia Minor workshop, reflects that quiet transformation, where myth is carried into faith.
🦁 Friday, June 12: Did English writer D.H. Lawrence visit the Etruscan Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia?- Discover the Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia, one of the most vivid surviving windows into Etruscan life, its walls alive with banqueters, dancers, and musicians gathered around a great wine crater, painted with a joy and sensory immediacy that captivated D.H. Lawrence when he visited in 1927.
🪞 Wednesday, June 17: Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika’s Interior with Woman and Mirror – Discover Ghika’s painting of an Interior with Woman and Mirror, a luminous, stylish canvas that radiates youthful vivaciousness and the unmistakable charge of a young artist in full creative dialogue with his Parisian contemporaries. Yet beneath that gorgeous surface lies a deeper conversation – between influence and reinvention – inviting us to look again and look closer.
✨ Sunday, June 21: Celebrate the 1st Day for Summer with Meissen Porcelain figurines –These elegant figures personify the Four Seasons through gesture, dress, and mood—from blooming spring to wintry stillness—showcasing the refined Rococo craftsmanship of the Meissen manufactory in the 18th century.
🌊 Thursday, June 25: Virgilio Costantini paints with a deeply impressionistic sensibility – ‘On the Cliff (Madame Costantini)’, the Sicilian painter Virgilio Costantini presents his wife in a moment of quiet elegance, a personal masterpiece that combines tenderness and painterly virtuosity.
📖 Tuesday, June 30: Newsletter for July 2026
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💐 Wishing you a joyful and thoughtful June, with moments of beauty and discovery,
Amalia Spiliakou / Teacher Curator