One day, in the gallery of the collector spouses from New York Maya and Anatoly Bekkerman, the bell rang: the outfitter’s granddaughter offered them a picture, which Fyodor Chaliapin paid 100 years ago with ... for a tailcoat! The lady spelled the surname of the great singer as "Shatapkin", but the canvas was undoubtedly of Korovin's brush. The creators were friends, Korovin painted a portrait of Chaliapin’s daughters, so he had several works by the artist. Four of them were used to pay the merchant for the clothes.

When Claude Monet turned 20, he had to participate in the drawing of lots. At that time, there was no conscription in France, but under the law in force, all young men of the city who reached the age of twenty were gathered and had their names written on pieces of paper which were put into the ballot box – in this way a lottery system determined who was called up for military service. They had to serve 7 years. It was also officially allowed to pay for someone to take your place. But Claude had already started dreaming about white sands, starry nights, and an incredibly beautiful military uniform.
Monet asked to serve in Algeria. He spent a year in the personal protection of marshal Pélissier but didn't participate in a single military campaign. Monet escaped out of boredom and despair – and was found unconscious and feverish by his colleagues. He had typhoid. Unlike his colleagues (Impressionists), Monet remained indifferent to oriental exotics.

Botticelli was unhappy in love and never married, because he was in love with Simonetta Vespucci, the first beauty of the Renaissance era, dubbed La Sans Pareille. She became a model of the famous painting "The Birth of Venus", her image was also on other canvases by the master. Unfortunately, Simonetta never belonged to him: she was the wife of Marco Vespucci (the cousin of the famous Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci!) and the beloved of the younger brother of the Florentine ruler Giuliano Medici. However, it didn’t make Simonetta’s fate happy. The beauty, which made crazy all the noble men of the city, died of tuberculosis at the age of 23. Botticelli was buried next to Simonetta in the church of Ognisanti 34 years after her death, according to the will of the creator.

According to one of the legends, Raphael's beloved Fornarina was a commoner and led a very unjust way of life. The artist, sincerely fond of her, bought he from her father for 3 thousand gold coin. But Fornarina had affairs on other men and his students. After Raphael's death, she received a considerabe fortune under the will, but continued to be libertine, becoming one of the most famous Roman courtesans.
And according to another legend, Raphael and Fornarina sincerely loved each other, and after the death of the artist, Fornarina went to the monastery, where she soon died. Choose the version!

Henri Matisse gained fame quickly, but his financial situation remained precarious. And only his acquaintance with Russian patrons and collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov helped him to get out of poverty once and for all.
In 1908, an art connoisseur Sergei Shchukin commissioned him two panels, which he intended to hung on the walls of his Moscow mansion. It was then when the first Dance appeared. Shchukin invited Matisse to Russia, where the artist was completely overwhelmed by Russian icons.

The Russian artist had a legendary exclusive visual memory. One day, into the hometown of Vrubel, Saratov, they brought a large-scale copy of the "Last Judgment" fresco by the great Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo. The future brilliant Russian artist was just Misha then, he was 9 years old. The boy took pencils and brushes at the age of five, so he hastened to look at the work, housed in the church, together with his father, and for a long time he studied every detail of it, even though his father called him to return home. Afterwards, having retired to his nursery, he reproduced the seemingly impossible for the child composition with masterful precision.

4 miles of red yarn, 200 pairs of shoes and handwritten notes were used by Chiharu Shiota for her performance "Perspective", which dramatically and emotionally conveys the personal memories of the Japanese artist. The new art object is intended for the Venice Biennale-2015. Chiharu Shiota is known throughout the world for her research into the phenomenon of memory, losses and totems, in which people can turn ordinary household items such as shoes and keys.

Arkhip Kuindzhi adored birds. He considered himself a “birds' chosen one”, said that the birds understood his speech and let him pet them. Usually laconic Arkhip Kuindzhi became extremely talkative when it came to birds. He spent hours sitting on the roof of his house, "talking" with pigeons and crows. Every month he bought 60 French buns, up to 10 kg of meat and 6 sacks of oats to feed his feathered friends. Once the illustrator Pavel Scherbov published a caricature depicting Kuindzhi giving an enema to a bird. They say that Arkhip Kuindzhi, deprived of sense of humour, got terribly offended.

Alphonse Mucha made his way to his luck for a long time, and he became famous literally in one night. His success was brought by the unsurpassed Sarah Bernhardt, who approved his poster sketch, in which she acted in main role in the play "Gismonda". After the posters were spread, Mucha instantly became famous. It is rumored that the Parisians liked his posters so much that they bought additional copies from the distributors, and if they did not manage to agree with them, they stole posters, cutting them off in the dark from the walls with razor blades. Well, turning ordinary objects into works of art was a special gift of the famous artist.

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.

The American artist John Singer Sargent was friends with the famous London art dealer Asher Wertheimer, and had painted 14 portraits of his family members. The favourite artist’s model was the youngest daughter Ena Wertheimer, who was 13 years away from the romantic portraitist, moreover, they belonged to different social circles. On the eve of her wedding, the artist painted Ena’s portrait, as if she sailed away in the suit of a naval officer, leaving Whitman's poetry lines in his notebook: "O we can wait no longer, We too take ship O soul, Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas". After that, he officially declared that he is all over with custom-made portraits. The artist only made exceptions for his friends John Rockefeller, Henry James, Woodrow Wilson.

The great Sandro Botticelli could annoy the annoying with consummate skill. His new neighbour, cloth-weaver, wouldn't let the artist live: his eight looms rumbled to the point they shook the house! It was impossible for Sandro to work or to stay in his house. In response to complaints and requests, the neighbour only answered that in his own house he could and would do what pleased him. Well, once the weaver woke up in the morning, looked into his yard and was taken aback: on the wall of Sandro's house, which was higher than his neighbour's one, poised a huge stone. So every time the wall shook the stone seemed to be just about to fall and crush the weaver's house. And Botticelli smiled and gave him answer in his own words, that in his own house he could and would do whatever pleased him. The weaver could get no other answer, until at last he was forced to come to terms. Giorgio Vasari wrote about this incident in his Lives... Read more stories about Botticelli on Arthive.

"When I accept a picture by myself, it's more serious than if it were judged by all juries in the world!" this was the artistic creed of the perfectionist Paul Cézanne. Because of the fact that creating one picture took a very long time, Cézanne could not paint live flowers. He complained that they fade too fast, and the ripening fruit change colours. Therefore, he preferred to depict artificial flowers. But you can’t call the flowers by Cézanne artificial, can you?

The Austrian Dieter Buchhart combined three generations of modernists in one exhibition "The Masters of Modernism: Edvard Munch, Peder Balke and Per Kirkeby", and showed their art quirks. Thus, the Norwegian artist Peder Balke (1804–1884), liked to draw not only with brushes but also with his fingers dipped in water and paint – he got special color transitions this way. And the famous Norwegian Edward Munch (1863–1944) often painted himself somewhere in the background of the picture, denoting his own presence on the canvases.

In Moscow in May 2015, the Museum AZ has been opened, the museum of the artist Anatoly Zverev (1931-1986). "The best Russian drawer," according to Picasso, the master attracts with his special magic. A couple of years ago, Alika Costakis, the daughter of the famous collector George Costakis, presented more than 600 works for the future museum. In his memoirs, the collector also wrote about a romantic history: the enthusiastic, true artist Zverev was in love with Alika and one day he allegedly painted 57 her portraits! She did not pose, but did her ordinary household chores, and the master caught the cherished curves on the fly!

A young singer became a model for the Christ in the famous Da Vinci’s painting. Then for another three years, Leonardo was looking for a model to depict Judas. And suddenly, when he saw a drunkard lying about in the gutter, the artist decided that it was the man to pose for Judas! He dragged his "find" into a tavern, where he immediately began to paint him as Judas. When the drunk man sobered up, he told the artist that he had already posed for him when he sang in the church choir: it was the same man who was da Vinci's model for Christ.

Artist Domenico Beccafumi wanted to please his customer, collecting all the Roman attractions, including the Colosseum, in one picture. He also took care of an entertaining story. "The Story of Papirius" is the story of a boy who was drawn to debate and vote in the Senate and had to keep a secret about what he had heard. But at home, his mother came up with questions, so he had to invent on the go, and he said that a very delicate matter was discussed: what is better to allow - men have two wives or women to have two husbands? Mom immediately spread the rumour around the city, and a women's rebellion began (they didn’t really like the first option)!

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.

The third place on the list of the most expensive living female artists is taken by Yayoi Kusama with her polka dots obsession. There are polka dots on her canvases, objects and even people... Actually, "obsession" here is far from being a metaphor: the Japanese artist admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital and confessed: "I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease. If it wasn't for art, I would have killed myself long ago." Indeed, the saving art is polka-dotted.

Sometimes not only counterfeits get exposes, but also ... originals! "The Procuress" was considered a forgery by the great falsifier of paintings Hans van Meegeren (famous for his marvelous counterfeit "Vermeers") for a long time. However, after a detailed study, it was authenticated as the genuine picture created by the Dutchman Dirk van Bauburen in 1622. It was probably the first case of an unfairly "slandered" picture faker, who took up the illegal forgery of canvases in order to avenge the world for not recognizing his pictorial talent.