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.

Queen Victoria made intimate sketches of members of the Royal Family that she never expected or wanted the public to see. When a journalist leaked them in the, she took him to court in what is one of the earliest examples of a public figure going after the media. So her first solo exhibition was arranged only 111 years after her death – in 2012. The public had the opportunity to see sweet sketches of her daughter at bath time and in her royal finery. The drawings displayed a talent that few people were aware that the Queen possessed. By the way, her descendant – Charles, Prince of Wales is also interested in drawing. He creates scenic watercolour landscapes of locations worldwide, including Australia, Jamaica, Asia, and of course, the Royal Gardens.

Korovin made a name for himself with his stage design for Savva Mamontov's performances (Faust, Aida, etc.). And here's a story told by the stage designer and artist Alexandr Golovin.
Korovin's decorations were huge and the artist got very tired working on them and somehow fell asleep right in his studio, in the middle of the scenery. While sleeping, he accidentally knocked over a pot with white paint which stained the canvases. And while Korovin was sleeping, the carpenters took his decorations to the theatre. The artist rushed there and hid behind a chair, waiting for the reaction of the picky and strict Mamontov. The curtain went up, and everyone gasped in amazed delight – the white flowers decorating the scenery were incredibly beautiful. Mamontov rushed to shake Korovin's hand, congratulating him with extraordinary creative success. "The flowers really came up great," said Korovin calmly, seeing those white spots for the first time.

In 1832, the paintings of two famous artists, who had a quarrel a year before because their paintings had been hung side-by-side, ended up on the same wall of the hall at the Royal Academy of arts. Constable's Opening of Waterloo Bridge was a complex work which had been in progress for ten years. Turner's Helvoetsluys seemed to be a simpler seascape. Shortly before the opening, Constable was adding final touches to his piece. Turner walked in, looked at both paintings, and then added one detail to his one – a little red buoy swaying on the waves. The bright spot instantly attracted the attention of the audience. Constable complained that Turner had been in and 'fired a gun'. 180 years after the first conflict of these landscape artists, their "controversial" paintings were hung side-by-side again.

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.

Aivazovsky resourcefully attracted rich customers. Before the arrival of the guests, the artist's apprentice applied diluted ink or sepia-stains on paper with a sponge for some indeterminate outlines to emerge. Then Aivazovsky cut the paper into small pieces, stained the spots (still a brilliant brush!), to get quite spectacular seascapes with waves and clouds. They were inserted into the frame and presented to every noble person who visited the artist's studio. After that, the "flattered" visitor considered it his duty to buy a big picture from Aivazovsky for hundreds or even thousands of rubles.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers are fading. This was confirmed by experts who have studied the version of the painting from the artist’s museum in Amsterdam. The thing is that the artist used two differing yellow pigments in the work, one of which is extremely sensitive to light and is fading to a brownish colour over time as a result. It seems that the artist himself was all too aware that the colours in his work were transient. "Paintings fade like flowers," he wrote in a letter to his brother Theo. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has already lowered its galleries’ lighting in an attempt to slow the aging process of 200 paintings and 400 drawings by the artist.

In France, in April 2015, a picture of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a famous French artist of the 19th century, was discovered – a true miracle of the stock control conducted by Emmanuelle Busline, curator and adviser on historical monuments of the region. In the chapel attic of the former Hotel Dieu Hospital, a large canvas of 4.3 by 3.4 meters was found, rolled up and covered with dust – an image of the Madonna with a baby in her arms and a kneeling king. A well-known plot for the artist!

It is believed that Ingres presented the picture to the city in 1826, when he finished it. It hung in the local church of Saint-Désiré, and in 1936, when the restoration began in the temple, it was transferred to the former hospital and forgotten. It is believed that this is the second version of "The Vow of Louis XIII". The leader of European academicism created the first version in 1824 by the order of the King of France, Charles X.

The "Retrospective Bust Of A Woman", created by Salvador Dalí in 1933 for the Surrealist exhibition in Pierre Colle Gallery (Paris) is quite original. On the porcelain bust of a woman, there is a loaf of bread (a surreal cap!) and a bronze ink-pot – the image of L'Angélus by Jean-Francois Millet. Plus, ants on the face, a paper "scarf", corn on the shoulders – well, just a parody of fashion! The original of which was spoiled... by the dog of Picasso. The artist visited the exhibition with his pet, and the dog devoured the loaf! The whole idea was actually wasted... Now its reconstruction with a fake loaf is in the Salvador Dalí Theater Museum in Figueres.

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.

The paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the 17th century, are full of drama. The artist herself experienced a tragedy: the Florentine artists Agostino Tassi, in whose workshop she studied, raped his young student. Artemisia filed lawsuit against him and experienced a humiliating public hearing, ending with a mild one-year jail sentence for Tassi. Disappointed, but not subdued, the artist rendered justice in her paintings: she depicted the main characters of her paintings Jael and Sisera and Judith Slaying Holofernes with Agostino Tassi's face.

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.

The impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte was better known as a patron of art. Having inherited his father's fortune, he supported still unrecognized artists of the time: he bought works, paid for the workshops (for example, Monet), organized exhibitions and auctions where he exhibited paintings from his own collection and bought them at a high price – a marketing move! His hobby were orchids, yachts building, and textile design. And in the honorary "List of outstanding philatelists" he is listed as the "father of philately", his stamp collection is now in the British Museum. He willed a collection of 68 impressionist works (Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Cézanne, Manet, etc.) to France, now the paintings are a part of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the remainder is in the D'Orsay Museum.

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.

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.

In 2008, Tiepolo's name was the talk of the art world: a picture of the great master was found in the attic of a French estate! Shy grandparents of the current owners prudently hid the luxurious topless lady depicted on the canvas. Thus they perfectly preserved the picture! It is believed that it was ordered by the Russian Empress Elizabeth to decorate the Winter Palace, as there are similar images of the series there. The canvas was called "Portrait of a Lady as Flora" and soon sold at Christie's auction for 4,227,780 dollars, almost three times "overlapping" the considerable estimate.

13-year-old Auguste felt like the church boys’ choir was where he belonged: large organ pipes hid him from the eyes of the worshippers, while he could see and feel everyone. Loaders, traders, workers and many others came to morning mass. "It was on a cold morning like that I understood Rembrandt," recalled Renoir later. He had a beautiful baritone, learned musical notation and performed complex passages. At that time, the regent of the choir and the church organist was Charles Gounod, still young and unknown (the opera Faust would appear only in 10 years). The regent was sure that Renoir stood a pretty good chance of becoming a famous opera singer. He gave the boy private lessons and persuaded his parents to choose a musical education for their son

Critics liked to call the characters by the artist "cardboard dolls" or "lifeless caricatures". However, Seurat portrayed people in this way quite consciously, deliberately simplifying forms and styling figures following the spirit of flat Greek frescoes or Egyptian hieroglyphs. The artist chose such an image manner according to his philosophy: "I want to reduce the figures of modern people to their essence, make them move just like on frescoes by Phidias, and arrange them on the canvas in chromatic harmony."

During the restoration of the Caravaggio’s "Bacchus", on the decanter, they found a vague reflection of a man – probably a self-portrait by Caravaggio. It is interesting that the glass decanter is to the right of the young god (posed by a famous model), and he holds his glass in his left hand. Apparently, the artist used a pinhole camera when creating a picture – an optical device for transferring an image of a real object to the surface, for example, a canvas. At the same time, the artist "transferred" himself.

Hurrying from Germany in 1914, Wassily Kandinsky left most of his paintings to Gabriele Münter, with whom he was betrothed. A few years later, he returned to Germany with his wife Nina, and asked Münter to return his works. But Gabriele refused, for he promised to marry her! Now she left his canvases for herself. Kandinsky led the trial for 5 years, but eventually he officially recognized hi ex-bride Münter as the legal owner of the paintings. She did not sell the pictures, and at the age of 80, in 1957, she transferred the whole collection (54 works!) to the Lenbachhaus Gallery.