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.

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.

This happened when Kandinsky was about 30 years old. After visiting Wagner's Opera Lohengrin in Moscow, he suddenly realized that he could "see" music. Later he wrote: "The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colours in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me." Shortly afterwards, Wassily Kandinsky decided to leave the legal profession and became an artist.

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.

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.

Having become famous and rich, Renoir still wore the same suit for 10 years, didn't tip waiters, but dispensed money to those deceived by notaries and other unfortunate ones who daily asked him for money for a sick child, a dying aunt or an innocently convicted husband. The artist's relatives protected him from those arrogant canters, therefore most often the “unfortunate” ones were waiting for him on his way from home to the studio. But for these cases, Madame Renoir came up with a protection scheme: seeing the beggar, the model would run to the studio, take her clothes off and quickly take a beautiful pose. Only the fear that his model would catch a cold could make Renoir quickly see the visitor off and light the fireplace, which he never lit for himself alone.

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".

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)!

The First President of the Royal Academy of Arts Joshua Reynolds had an obsessive tendency of retouching and reworking the paintings of his great colleagues. For example, during the study of Rembrandt's "Susanna and the Elders" in 2015, the restorers came to a shocking conclusion: a significant part of the canvas was repainted in the XVIII century, some areas were simply washed off with solvent and painted anew in a lighter palette, which was more fashionable at that period. Scientists believe that in this "barbarism" was engaged none other than Reynolds, as this kind of "editing" refers to the period when "Susanna and the Elders" was in his collection.

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.

Once fascinated by painting, Churchill could no longer live without this hobby, drawing wherever he could. In March 1921, on arriving to Egypt at the Cairo Conference, Churchill decided to paint the pyramids. He decided to ride a camel to the desert. However, sitting up on the "two-humped horse", Winston lost his balance and fell to the ground, which caused him a ragged wound. However, the journey continued, and yet he made sketches of the Sahara and the pyramids.

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.

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 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.

During his forced resignation in 1915, the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill fell into such a depression that his wife feared that he would commit suicide. This continued until his relative interested him in painting. Gradually, the Prime Minister not only forgot about depression, but also carried this passion throughout his life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.