Piero della Francesca is the creator of "the greatest painting in the world": that's how English writer Aldous Huxley described the painter's Resurrection in his essay Along the Road. The fresco was created somewhere between 1450 and 1465 in the artist's hometown Sansepolcro on the wall of the town hall (which is now a museum). The masterpiece survived until the modern times: it had been hidden beneath a layer of plaster for nearly two hundred years. And during the Second World War, an officer of the Royal Horse Artillery, Anthony Clarke saved the fresco and the town by holding back from using his troop's guns to shell Sansepolcro. He’d read Aldous Huxley's essay about "the greatest picture in the world." And in return, the locals named in his honour a Sansepolcro suburban street. By the way, in translation from the Italian, the name of the tower means "the Church of the Holy Sepulchre" and the fresco depicts the risen Christ on the brim of the sepulchre. Read more about the artist on Arthive.

By the early 1940s, Lucian Freud – the grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and the future cult British artist – had already been a student of two British schools. He got kicked out of the last one for bad behaviour: dropping his trousers in public for a bet. Having been thrown out of several art schools, Freud finally gave up on academic education and decided to become a sailor. Having mastered the art of tattooing, Lucian quickly made friends with other sailors, but his first voyage left him with severe tonsillitis, putting paid to the sea career. Freud had no other choice rather than becoming an artist.

Apart from domestic animals, Pablo Picasso always had many birds. The French photographer and sculptor Michel Sima found a little owl in Antibes and gave it to Picasso. It was brought from Antibes to Paris, and lived in the artist's kitchen, sharing a cage with canaries and doves. The owl had a wild temper and rejected everyone except for Picasso. And the artist, known for his Dove of Peace drawing, also painted owls.

According to the memories of his relatives, the first word of the baby Pablo Picasso was the word "pencil". When the boy grew up, his father began to take his son with him to college, where he taught drawing. And, one day, Picasso’s father for some reason was allegedly called from the office, where he was working on a painting depicting pigeons. On return, he found that the young Pablo finished the picture. The mastery of the 13-year-old son shocked his father so much that he gave Pablo his palette and brush, and since then he no longer came to easel.

Venus Verticordia, created in 1868, is the only nude painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Because of it, he broke with John Ruskin, the leading English art critic of the Victorian era. Ruskin's hypocrisy and double attitude to the female body are well documented. He found sensuality in Rossetti's art disturbing. Unable to resist the true cause of his discomfort towards Venus herself, he unleashed harsh criticism on the roses, which the artist painted with great difficulty. But, most likely, Ruskin's reaction wasn't caused by the flowers. He was frightened by the woman looking from the canvas so seductively and powerfully that the critic found it menacing.

In 1938, Dole company approached Georgia O'Keeffe, offering her an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii to produce two print-ad images for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Though the artist only spent nine weeks visiting the island paradise, she completed no fewer than 20 paintings. Ironically, the one thing that O’Keeffe neglected to paint was a pineapple. After the trip, she turned two pieces into Dole: Heliconia, Crab’s Claw Ginger and Papaya Tree, ‘Íao Valley, Maui. The second one was rejected because the papaya was the rival fruit to the pineapple. Upon the artist’s return to New York, Dole sent her a pineapple so she could finish the assignment. In the summer of 2018, almost all of the works from the series were on view at the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawaii at the New York Botanical Garden.

Old masters often portrayed brawlers and drunkards, and wine served as one of the debauchery symbols. In the painting by Jan Steen "Rascal Family", the mistress of the house tramples the Bible, the maid fills her glass with wine, holding the hand of the owner of the house. Fate hangs over these people’s heads in the form of a basket with a sword (justice and punishment), a crutch and a mug (impending poverty) and a beater (it was used by those who suffered of plague and leprosy). A brave artist! Steen himself (the father of the family), his wife Margriet van Goyen (mother) and their sons Thaddeus (behind the grandmother) and Cornelis were the models for the picture!

By the age of 20, Matisse had studied to be a lawyer and got the right to start his own practice, which caused his return to his native wilderness in the north of France. But suddenly he was overtaken by an attack of appendicitis, and Matisse had to undergo several surgical interventions (it was 1889, and the patient had complications). To entertain his son and cheer him up, his mother brought paints to the hospital, he enthusiastically began to copy the old postcards. The mood improved so much that after the hospital Matisse headed straight for Paris, having decided to become an artist. His father, the shopkeeper was very upset: he hoped that the son would become a decent person.

...According to the memoirs of their contemporaries, Raphael and Agostino Chigi (his richest customer) were friends. And yet, duty before friendship. Once Raphael painted several frescoes for Chigi. Having finished his work, the artist unexpectedly demanded to double the payment. At first, Agostino Chigi's cashier Julio Borghese refused to do that, but Raphael would not budge. "Call on the experts and you will see how moderate I am in my demands," he argued.
Knowing the strained relations between Raphael and Michelangelo, Borghese chose the latter to be an expert. Buonarroti came, slowly and silently examined the frescoes of his rival, and pointing to the head of one of the sibyls said, "That head alone is worth 100 ducats, the others are worth not less." He disliked Raphael, but would never allow himself to be biased.

When Cézanne was passing the Saint-Lazare station on his way home, he met a stranger who asked him to show a sketch he was carrying. Having seen the landscape painting, the pale, skinny young man was amazed with its' unprecedented green colour, freshness, and artistic style. "If you like my trees that much, you can take them!" – said Cézanne. "I have nothing to pay with," answered the artist's new fan. Cézanne gave him the painting for free and both of them left the station completely happy.
Right from the station, happy Paul went to the studio, which he rented together with Renoir and Monet. "I've got a fan!" he solemnly declared from the doorway. That stranger appeared to be the poor composer and musician Ernest Cabaner, who was banned from all the cafés where he tried to play his own music.

During World War II, the Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Jan Vermeer was brought from Dresden to Saxony and kept there in a tunnel, which rescued it from destruction. The soldiers of the Red Army sent the painting to the Soviet Union, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, the Soviets decided to return it to Germany, "for the purpose of strengthening and furthering the progress of friendship between the Soviet and German peoples." Aggrieved at the thought of losing hundreds of paintings, art historians and museum curators in the Soviet Union suggested that "in acknowledgment for saving and returning the world-famous treasures of the Dresden Gallery" the Germans should perhaps donate to them Vermeer's masterpiece and Sleeping Venus by Giorgione. The Germans did not take to the idea, and the painting was returned to Germany in 1955.

The famous and world-renowned artist Renoir was born in a poor family, and in his youth, he was engaged in far less creative professions than painting. He followed his father, who was a tailor, and sewed clothes and shoes, that is, he mastered the work of a tailor and a shoemaker. The first realization of his artistic gift was painting of dishes – Renoir painted porcelain plates. Fortunately, Renoir managed to achieve widespread fame and become one of the leading French artists even during his lifetime.

William Turner was very reluctant to part with his paintings: he wanted the best of them to be preserved for descendants in a single collection. And if the thing was dear to him, willing to scare away a persevering buyer, he inflated the price wickedly. So it happened to "Dido building Carthage". In the bidding process, the price rose from 500 to 2,000 pounds and the angry buyer blurted out: "What are you going to do with it?" "They'll bury me in it, what else?" Turner joked spitefully. The artist's phrase became popular, so that when Turner died, the gossip spread across London. The abbot of St. Paul's Cathedral, having learned about the death of the artist, allegedly stated indignantly that he would not read the funeral prayer, if Turner was wrapped in a picture!

One of the most revered Dutch painters of the seventeenth century Gerrit Dou is renowned for his small and yet incredibly meticulous and skilful works. His paintings are distinguished by a smooth, as if enamelled, surface, which was typical of the 'fijnschilders' ('fine painters') school. The amount of time the artist spent on the most minute details in his paintings can be illustrated be this legend: when Dou was complimented on his extreme patience in painting a broomstick which was hardly larger than a fingernail, the artist responded that he would require at least three more days to complete it.

When Renoir worked, he didn't notice anything around. He would come to the forest at Fontainebleau, set up his easel and forget about everything. After he noticed the deer gathering behind him, he started bringing them bread to eat. That was a big mistake. Since then, the artist found them every single time he tried to paint: "They started crowding behind my back, nuzzling against me and breathing into my neck. I had to be rough sometimes ... would you finally let me paint or not?"
But once, having come to the usual place, Renoir did not see the deer. They were scared away by hunters. The artist was indignant: "I wanted to shoot those blockheads in red caftans! If hell exists, then I know how they will be punished: the deer will chase them until they run themselves out of breath!"

No one managed to avoid the sarcastic jokes and condescending remarks of Edgar Degas. Everybody got it in the neck: artists and writers, critics and politicians; admiring biographers and chroniclers of Impressionism even recorded excerpts of Degas's conversations in cafes and at the exhibitions.
When Pablo Picasso settled in Montmartre, there had been legends about Edgar Degas. Residents of the commune Bateau-Lavoir, their guests and friends (poets and artists) spent evenings "playing Degas". The point of the game was to insult each other in a perfectly calm voice and as politely and secular as possible.

In the White House, they always treated painting with piety. So, during the war of 1812, Dolly Madison saved the portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stewart. Jacqueline Kennedy borrowed eight paintings by Cézanne from the permanent collection of one of the museums. Hillary Clinton withstood the abstract painting “Mountain at Bear Lake—Taos” by Georgia O'Keefe, while critics assured that the work will break the restrained elegance of the Green Room, created by the paintings of the XIX century. Laura Bush convinced the committee that oversees the art collection of the White House to accept the painting by her contemporary Andrew Wyeth as a gift, although it contradicted the rules: before getting to the White House, the painting must be aged for at least 25 years. Therefore, the collection of the residence contains the minimum number of works of living artists.

Frida Kahlo created her biggest and most difficult piece, The Wounded Table, in 1940, experiencing a divorce from Diego Rivera. Being a dedicated Communist, she sent the work to the USSR as "a gift of friendship", but Soviet officials considered it to be an example of "decadent bourgeois formalist art" and unsuitable for public display. In 1955, the painting was shown in Poland in an exhibition, but on the way back to Moscow The Wounded Table disappeared as if into thin air. Years of searching in Europe and America have been unsuccessful. The painting remains the "Holy Grail" for art historians, studying Frida Kahlo's work.

One of the finest and most famous works created by Alfons Mucha is a gold bracelet called Médée Snake. The snake wrapped around the ring wraps the wrist, and the snake's sting passes into the ring through a thin chain. For the first time the image of this bracelet appeared on the playbill for the Médée play. The actress liked it so much that she commissioned jeweller to create a snake bracelet and a ring embellished with gemstones for her to wear on stage. This bracelet shows that his creator was an artist, for the beautiful decoration has no practical application. After all, in the world, there is no such thin and elegant hand, on which it could be put on! The Médée Snake is called "jewelery of the century".

"Women of Algiers (Version O)" by Pablo Picasso set a new world record as the most expensive painting sold at auction. On May 12, 2015 at Christie's auction in New York they paid more than $179 million for it. Previously, the most expensive work sold at auction was Francis Bacon's triptych " Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud". In November 2013, it was auctioned at Christie's for $142.4 million, taking the priority from Edward Munch’s "Scream".