The "Fresco" is considered a landmark work by Pollock, for he never painted huge artworks before. However, Peggy Guggenheim ordered a mural for the wall of her house, and the surrealist Marcel Duchamp advised to make it not on plaster, but on canvas. Jackson Pollock nearly put the order on the back burner, as he spent several months contemplating a blank canvas, and "gradually fell into a real depression," according to his wife Lee Krasner. However, he got out in just one night: the creator was visited by inspiration, and in less than a day he created a work later recognized as a masterpiece. Well, he got over his fear of big canvases, and they eventually became his mega-"business card".

This is about a magnificent canvas of a mystical genre uncharacteristic for Aivazovsky. Being inspired by the biblical line "and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters", he embodied it on canvas. Pope Gregory XVI wanted to acquire the painting. Aivazovsky's studio was visited by endless processions consisting of prelates, cardinals and other high-ranking officials, but all these commissions could not find any flaws in the work that would make it unworthy of the Vatican gallery. The Pope bought the painting and awarded Aivazovsky with a golden medal. In this regard, Gogol, with whom Aivazovsky became friends in Rome, came up with a great pun: "Well done, Vania! You, a little man from the banks of the distant Neva, came to Rome and your Chaos immediately caused a chaos in the Vatican! And it's frustrating that if it had been me, a scribbler, who caused chaos in the Vatican, I would have been thumped, and Vania Aivazovsky was given a golden medal ... "

One of the treasures of the Matisse’s art collection was "Three Bathers" by Cezanne, he bought the picture from Ambroise Vollard (along with the bust of Rochefort) for fifteen hundred francs. Henri Matisse, with his flawless artist's flair, appreciated the Cézanne's "Bathers" even when the painter was considered an unsuccessful loser. Matisse fell in love with this picture, and neither his poverty and need, nor even his friends’ irony could reduce his admiration for Cézanne's masterpiece and make him sell it. In 1934, when an American collector offered the artist more than a million, Matisse refused to part with the canvas in a royal manner. A few years later, he made a royal gift to the Museum of Contemporary Art of France – the Cézanne’s “Bathers”.

Vasily Vereshchagin burned his paintings at least three times. For the first time it happened in the Academy of Arts. Student Vereshchagin was supposed to copy the sketch for the painting Massacre of Penelope’s Suitors by the Returning Ulysses onto cardboard (by the way, the piece was awarded a silver medal), but instead burned his work in the furnace. Vereshchagin answered the amazed questions of his mentors by saying: "So that I never had to return to this nonsense." A pencil sketch with the same plot is kept in the Russian Museum and it looks like it's been through a lot, too.

At first, Edgar Degas's sculpture The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer got the negative public reaction. "She resembles a monkey, an Aztec, a fetus. If she were smaller, one would be tempted to enclose her in a glass jar of alcohol," said one of the critics. Another reviewers described her as "astoundingly ugly" while her forehead and lips were said to be "marked with a profoundly vicious character". Yet, now The Little Fourteen Year old Dancer is considered to be one of Edgar Degas' masterpieces. The model for the statue was Marie Geneviève van Goethem. Before sculpting the piece, Degas had drawn and painted her more than seventeen times, both clothed and nude. The artist had planned to show his artwork in 1880, at the Fifth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, but by the time of the opening he was not satisfied with his sculpture. It was shown a year later – dressed in a muslin skirt with a satin hair ribbon.

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.

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.

Leon Bakst came to the conclusion about the advantages of lecturing over creating paintings in 1923, after delivering at the Plaza Hotel his most famous lecture on fashion and design L'art du Costume et les lois, ces applications selon toute individualité. Bakst was paid 2,000 US dollars for this lecture. Its text was published in Vogue magazine. Bakst really enjoyed it and wrote to his sister that he craved more lectures like that: "This is like Chaliapin’s tour – pleasant and much easier than painting."

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.

All Aivazovsky's women were unusual. The artist's first wife, Julia Graves, was a governess. His second wife, Anna Sarkizova, was almost 40 years younger than him. But there was one more woman: ballerina Marie Taglioni, who was 13 years older than Aivazovsky. The story of their relationship is full of legends. Marie Taglioni helped Aivazovsky up when he fell on the road hurt by her carriage. He used to get tickets for Marie's performances, and she bought two of his paintings at the exhibition in Italy... And finally a personal meeting, followed by a lot of happiness, love, painting and ballet. The artist even proposed to his beloved one, but was refused – ballet above all! And, as they say, in memory of Marie, Aivazovsky kept her pink ballet for the rest of his life. When the artist died, his wife Anna burned this memento straight away.

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.

Ilya Repin was almost painfully stingy. Having learnt that tram tickets in St. Petersburg cost five kopecks in the morning, and ten kopecks in the afternoon, the artist tried to come to the city early in the morning. And when his daughter Vera needed massage sessions, Repin said a truly "brilliant" sentence: "You call the masseuse once, remember the massage techniques, and massage yourself then!".

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.

In 1993, the Tretyakov Gallery acquired Levitan's Portrait of a Little Boy Joseph Levin, made in the early 1880s. That 6-year-old boy with an inquisitive look would become a celebrity during Levitan's lifetime: Joseph Levin would later become a famous pianist Josef Lhévinne. Due to his extraordinary abilities, he would be taken to the senior "professorial" class of the Moscow Conservatory; he would be the first in his class, leaving his classmates Rachmaninoff and Scriabin behind. Later Joseph would go to Dresden to study under Anton Rubinstein, and in 1919 he would move to New York, where he would close his days, leaving a lot of grateful students and a short book Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing, that is considered a classic of musical and pedagogical literature.

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)!

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!

"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".

A pleasant surprise: the restorer discovered that the canvas from the London residence of the Dukes of Wellington belongs to the brush of the great Titian, and not an unnamed follower! The painting titled "Titian's Mistress" was believed to have been painted by a follower after the death of the artist in 1576, and did not appear in public for centuries, almost from the time it was stolen from the Royal Spanish Collection and brought to London in the year 1813. What an irony – the duke owned three originals of Titian, and didn’t even know about it! All of them were considered copies.