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!

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."

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!

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.

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.

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 2015, a geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso questioned the attribution of the painting Virgin of the Rocks from National Gallery in London to Leonardo da Vinci. It was all about... flowers. The flora in the Louvre version of the piece is painted as perfectly as possible, while the British version contains some irregularly-shaped and unidentifiable flowers. It is unlikely that one and the same person could paint a grotto so neatly in one work and so unnaturally in another. Especially when taking into account Leonardo being immersed in the comprehension of nature and depicting it. By the way, the London painting had long been considered a work of the master’s students and da Vinci's authorship was asserted only in 2010. And the National Gallery refused to comment on a new research.

When Cézanne was passing the Saint-Lazare station on his way home, he met a stranger who asked him to show a sketch he was carrying. Having seen the landscape painting, the pale, skinny young man was amazed with its' unprecedented green colour, freshness, and artistic style. "If you like my trees that much, you can take them!" – said Cézanne. "I have nothing to pay with," answered the artist's new fan. Cézanne gave him the painting for free and both of them left the station completely happy.
Right from the station, happy Paul went to the studio, which he rented together with Renoir and Monet. "I've got a fan!" he solemnly declared from the doorway. That stranger appeared to be the poor composer and musician Ernest Cabaner, who was banned from all the cafés where he tried to play his own music.

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.

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

The favorite place of residence of artists in Paris at the beginning of the last century was the subject of jokes. So, the artist Federer in difficult times loved to encourage his friend Amshey Nyurenberg:
"You have a magnificent workshop on Rue de la Santé, 32, next to the famous Santé prison". Above its entrance, at the top of the gate there is a historical revolutionary inscription: "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood". Of course, you would say what an irony. Then," he added, "in front of your workshop, there is a nunnery. Every morning, in the open window at the gate, you see gentle female hands. A mug of milk is in one of them, a piece of white bread in the other. Here's your breakfast ready! And not far from the studio is the famous Parisian venereal Hospital Cochin. What do you want, my friend?”

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.

Old masters often portrayed brawlers and drunkards, and wine served as one of the debauchery symbols. In the painting by Jan Steen "Rascal Family", the mistress of the house tramples the Bible, the maid fills her glass with wine, holding the hand of the owner of the house. Fate hangs over these people’s heads in the form of a basket with a sword (justice and punishment), a crutch and a mug (impending poverty) and a beater (it was used by those who suffered of plague and leprosy). A brave artist! Steen himself (the father of the family), his wife Margriet van Goyen (mother) and their sons Thaddeus (behind the grandmother) and Cornelis were the models for the picture!

The author's copy of the famous "Portrait of Jacopo Foscarini", seized by the Nazis from art historian and collector August Liebmann Mayer, was kept in the Louvre since 1951. The picture, presumably, by Giovanni Batista Moroni was returned to the daughter of the owner, who died in a concentration camp, at a special ceremony at the Jewish Heritage Museum (New York, USA). The undisputed original work is stored in Budapest; it is a notable work in the artist's heritage.

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.

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.

The projects of contemporary creators in Versailles are always bold. In the summer of 2015 in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles near Paris, there was installed a 60-meter steel sculpture, resembling a funnel – a project of the British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture is officially called The Dirty Corner (2011). However, the artist himself dubs the work the “queen's vagina”. He said that it symbolises "the vagina of the queen who took power". The work provoked angry criticism from conservative French commentators who criticized placing The Dirty Corner in such a historic place. This work of art was even subjected to the act of vandalism: the sculpture was spray-painted. The Dirty Corner had to be cleaned.

When Paul Cézanne didn't like his own painting, he would just throw it out of the window. Old olives growing under the windows of the artist's studio were hung with unfinished still lifes. Sometimes Paul would think about some of his not completely hopeless sketches that had been hanging in the garden for several months and put them back on his easel. "Son, we must get down the Apples from the cherry tree; I think I'll work on that study some more, " he told his son, who brought a French art dealer Ambroise Vollard to Aix-en-Provence for new paintings.

At 24, Diego Velázquez was in Madrid and for a long time created only portraits. He was appointed court painter of King Philip IV almost immediately – the king established the artist near himself, arranged him a workshop in The Royal Palace to watch the master at work, conferred him court ranks and didn't allow anyone but Velázquez to portray him. This caused great jealousy among other artists, who spun intrigues against Velázquez. Once the agitated king came to the artist's workshop and stated right off the bat: "They say, you are good only at painting faces! Is it really true?" In order to calm the king down, Velázquez created a painting The Triumph of Bacchus (The Drunkards, 1628-29), which is now in the Museo del Prado.

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.