I had a craving for music and soon made enough progress that my teacher advised me to leave my studies and devote myself entirely to music. It was a temptation for me, but it didn’t last. My desire for knowledge was stronger. I had the inexpressible feeling that music would never abandon me; and in a way it never did, remaining for me an ever-present companion, always ready to dispense joy, to draw me into the secret of that wordless language which by the simple proportion of sonorous elements knows how to give such high pleasure, to tell so many things, to persuade, to touch, to move, to overwhelm and dazzle the heart.

Jacques (1882-1973) and Raïssa (1883-1960) Maritain
Philosopher (Jacques) writer and poet (Raïssa)

“Going back through my memories, I realize that Jacques introduced me to the great painters in a certain order, and haphazardly. He first led me by the paintings of the proto-renaissance Italians, who are obviously the ones people can immediately love, and without the need for any prior art education. In the West these are the artists on whom the first foundations of an education in art is built. Here, the great art of the painter, as if unaware of itself, is modestly adorned with simple grace and freshness. Pictorial beauty blends with the beauty of the chosen models, as well as with the interest of the “subject” treated. Academicism has not yet arrived on the scene neither with its coldness, and its proud distance, nor with the brutality and bad taste of trompe-l’œil, so that one is not mistaken in letting oneself be moved by their art. Duccio, Giotto, Angelico, introduce you at once to beauty as purified from this world, and to the world of the benignity and sweetness of divine grace, without your thinking about it; but you’re happy. Even more than the proto-renaissance Italians, artists of the French School moved me and took me captive forever. Their sober yet dramatic style, the depth of sorrowful feeling which emanates from their works, the very French grace of their faces and attitudes – those little faces of women, like a hand holding on to its prize, with their slightly upturned noses, their broad, rounded foreheads, their modest, mischievous smiles, that unpolished allure of the Virgins in their large, wide dresses, or in their very un-Greek tunics – how I loved them! How lovable and dear France was to me in them!”

Jacques (1882-1973) and Raïssa (1883-1960) Maritain
Philosopher (Jacques) writer and poet (Raïssa)