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.

William Turner's love of money was widely known and became the subject of many jokes. One of them was described by the artist's biographer George Walter Thornbury. When Turner arrived in Yorkshire, he brought the bookseller Robinson a sealed letter of recommendation from London Longman publishers. It was written there that “Above all things remember that Turner is the Great Jew.” Most likely, it was about his commerciality, but Robinson took everything literally. He would loudly assume that the guest would not want to go to church on Sunday and apologize when pork was served at the table.

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.

In 2015, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts issued an apology and cancelled a program, displaying Claude Monet's painting of his wife and giving the visitors the opportunity to put on a kimono similar to the one depicted in the painting, and encouraging them to pose for photographs. Before that, the painting La Japonaise. Camille Monet in Japanese Costume was shown all over Japan where the viewers posing in a kimono was an organic part of the special program. What could go wrong in America? And yet, an innocent event caused protest actions and accusations of cultural insensibility: some of the visitors noticed there "Orientalist flirtations with the exotic".

All Claude Monet's friends and relatives recalled the artist's unpredictable fits of rage. His children and wife Alice knew that it was better not to bother Monet at such moments, and even not to call him for dinner. The neighbours got used to the fact that it wasn't necessary to greet the eccentric artist on such days – he didn't respond or even hear them anyway. But there was one thing everyone was sure about – that fit of rage would end with something huge.
One morning, Monet was furious because grey road dust settled on the flowers in his garden. He slammed the door and went to the mayor: the road in Giverny had to be paved! The city hall had already considered that project more than once, but they didn't have enough money for it – they lacked 2,800 francs.
"I will give you 1,200 francs," Monet suggested.
In a few days, they started to pave the road to Rue.

An unstudious student, Claude painted the covers of notebooks and drew cartoons of teachers. The latter were so good that by the age of 15 he was famous in his native Le Havre as a skillful caricaturist. They asked him to draw caricature portraits, and he did, this time for money: 20 francs! Soon the amusing drawings by Claude Monet were displayed in the window of the only art supplies store in the city. The young Monet glowed with pride seeing them.

A lot of artists tied themselves in knots trying to emulate Kuindzhi's palette. Speaking of the painting Ukrainian Night, Kramskoy wrote in a letter to Repin: "I'm a complete fool in front of this painting. The lighting on the white hut is so realistic that it tiresome for my eyes to look at it, as if it is real..." But the secret of Kuindzhi's palette was easier than it seemed. One day Kuindzhi (who was teaching at the Academy of Arts at the time) invited his friend Dmitry Mendeleev to his class. The latter brought a device estimating the spectral sensitivity of the human eye. Kuindzhi was far ahead of his young students in this indicator. He saw in a different way. Not in terms of creativity, but in the most literal physiological sense.

The American author of world-famous animation characters, Walt Disney painted his first drawings on a wall, being 4 years old. Young Walt spent his childhood on the farm and most liked to draw animals. At the age of eight, he received the first nickel for drawing the veterinary's favourite horse.

When Jan Vermeer died, he left behind enormous debts. His widow, Catharina Bolnes, had to transfer ownership of her late husband's masterpiece Painter in his Studio (The Allegory of Painting) to her mother, Maria Thins, to keep it out of creditors' hands. However, a year later it was sold at auction and disappeared for more than 130 years. In 1813, the piece became part of Count Czernin's collection. He bought the painting for an extremely low price, having no idea that it was created by the great master from Delft. The aristocrat thought it was a painting by Pieter de Hooch, whose works cost much more at that time. It was only in the autumn of 1860 that the director of the Berlin museum, Gustav Waagen, recognized The Allegory of Painting as an authentic Vermeer.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, an English portrait and history painter, a representative of the English school of portraiture of the XVIII century, was never married. He proposed to the German artist Angelica Kauffman, who moved to London. Having been rejected and craving for revenge, he introduced her to the gigolo Frederick Brandt. The man got her into such a big mess that it got the whole Europe intrigued and inspired Victor Hugo to write his drama Ruy Blas.

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 famous Florentine painter of the Pre-Renaissance period Giotto di Bondone once played a trick on his teacher Cimabue Giovanni, and drew a fly on the nose of one of the painted characters. The insect looked so plausible that Cimabue took it for real and tried several times to brush it off from the picture. And only after several unsuccessful attempts, he finally understood what was the matter.

Zinaida Serebryakova moved to France in search of work, after the revolutionary peasants plundered her family estate. However, Parisians liked modernist trends, not "romantic realism", the favourite and vivid style of the artist. She went so badly that she had to make paints for herself, as there was no way to buy them. Now her paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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.

In his last years, Salvador Dalí suffered from parkinsonism, which precluded him from painting. And then his wife, incomparable and extraordinary Gala, found a Spanish artist Manuel Pujol of Baladas. In 1979–1981, he created about 400 works: oil paintings (about 200!), drawings, watercolors, lithographs, and he signed each of them with the famous signature of Salvador Dalí. These "unpleasant" details became known to the public, but the surrealist did not lose his head. He said that fakes are excellent, and they could well be his works!

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.

At the meetings of the young artists (future Impressionists) at Café Guerbois, Cézanne was a strange participant: he would break in all messy, wheeze, greet everyone, make a few rude jokes and then sit in silence listening to conversations about new art. When he didn’t like something said, he would just get up loudly and leave. When asked by the elegant painter Edouard Manet what he would show at the next Salon, Cézanne answered: "a pot of shit".
Every time, the judges of the Salon would squeamishly wait for this madman to bring his new masterpieces in a rattling truck or carrying them on his back. They got used to it. Cézanne would repeat that trick for 18 years until in 1882 his painting was accepted at the Salon.

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 1942, artist Max Ernst selected paintings for an exhibition in the gallery of his wife Peggy Guggenheim. One of the pictures, depicting a young beautiful topless woman with an anxious gaze at the open door, interested him very much... as well as the author of the work, Dorothea Tanning. The picture was "nameless", and he suggested Dorothea to call her "The Birthday"... She divorced her husband, he divorced his wife, and they went to Hollywood to get married. The artist Man Ray and his girlfriend Juliet Brauner were their witnesses, but they also decided to ... get married! It was a double marriage.

Rembrandt began to accept students, barely out of adolescence. The first apprentice of the 21-year-old painter was Gerrit Dou, who at that time was not yet 15 years old. It seems that Rembrandt never took beginners. A pupil’s parents had to pay the artist an annual tuition fee of 100 guilders. Rembrandt’s students learned by copying their master’s works and, later, by painting and drawing their own variations based on them. They had to work in an attic in separate cubicles partitioned by sailcloth or paper.