One of the most revered Dutch painters of the seventeenth century Gerrit Dou is renowned for his small and yet incredibly meticulous and skilful works. His paintings are distinguished by a smooth, as if enamelled, surface, which was typical of the 'fijnschilders' ('fine painters') school. The amount of time the artist spent on the most minute details in his paintings can be illustrated be this legend: when Dou was complimented on his extreme patience in painting a broomstick which was hardly larger than a fingernail, the artist responded that he would require at least three more days to complete it.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

We are lucky enough to know this artist under such a short name "Picasso". After all, you would say his full name at least for five minutes, and it would be even more challenging to remember it! The full name of Picasso consists of twenty-three words: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. After the Spanish tradition, Picasso received two family names for the first names of his parents: his father Ruíz and his mother Picasso. Well, it is rather difficult to say why he received such a long font name. Probably, the parents decided to list many deceased and living relatives of the family in it in order to honour their memory.

In the White House, they always treated painting with piety. So, during the war of 1812, Dolly Madison saved the portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stewart. Jacqueline Kennedy borrowed eight paintings by Cézanne from the permanent collection of one of the museums. Hillary Clinton withstood the abstract painting “Mountain at Bear Lake—Taos” by Georgia O'Keefe, while critics assured that the work will break the restrained elegance of the Green Room, created by the paintings of the XIX century. Laura Bush convinced the committee that oversees the art collection of the White House to accept the painting by her contemporary Andrew Wyeth as a gift, although it contradicted the rules: before getting to the White House, the painting must be aged for at least 25 years. Therefore, the collection of the residence contains the minimum number of works of living artists.

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.

After Ruben's death in 1640, van Dyck received a letter from the King of Spain. The artist had almost no doubts he would be offered a place at court. But Philip IV asked him to complete unfinished Rubens' commission first. "He managed to humiliate me even from his grave!" – said van Dyck discontentedly. He only had 12 months to live: a year after Rubens ' death, on December 9, 1641, the 42-year-old van Dyck died of a mysterious illness and was buried the same day as his daughter Justinia's baptism.

On one of the Paris boulevards an artist was working on his painting, having put an easel right on the street. Passers-by, used to such phenomena, now and then stopped nearby, looked over his shoulder, commented the painting in a low voice, and sometimes asked questions. A couple of Russian tourists watched for a long time how the bold, shining brushstrokes of the artist came to life on his canvas. One of them couldn't resist saying: "These French artists are so good at colour rendering!" "And the Russian ones are not worse! " – answered the first Russian Impressionist Konstantin Korovin.

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.

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."

Auguste Renoir liked painting pictures but didn't like talking about them. The connoisseurs of art, who grilled the artist about the sublime even on a train, would often hear his: "Sorry, I know nothing about high art, my works are pornographic". Yet, there's a grain of joke in every joke. The same Renoir was quite serious when saying: "I loved women even before I learned to walk... I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.”

Titian was a handsome man and a famous artist. Venetian ladies – from duchesses to courtesans – posed for him, and sometimes stayed in his studio a little bit (or even much) longer than they had to. But it was before Cecilia. She was different: shy, bright, smiling, and yet steady and reliable. Titian painted mistresses and wives of dukes and kings, but when his own wife saw herself on the canvas naked, she burst into tears and asked him not to disgrace her. They say that the artist changed the features of Cecilia's face in his painting Venus Anadyomene.

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 ... "

The main source of biographical information about Caravaggio – police and court records: there's at least one murder and countless fights under the belt of the Italian genius. One of these recorded fights gives reason to think that Caravaggio was not only a thug who should have been sent to anger management courses, but also a gourmet.
It happened in the tavern. A waiter served Caravaggio and two of his friends a large earthenware dish with eight artichokes: half of them were fried in oil and half – in butter. Caravaggio asked which were which: perhaps for him it was as important as light and shadow. The waiter shrugged and suggested that Caravaggio should sniff the artichokes to find out for himself. Caravaggio immediately leapt up, hit him with an earthenware dish and drew his ever-ready sword.

Passion for birds has become the main dominant of John Audubon's life. He was to manage the lead mines, but once he started drawing birds, he could not live without it, devoting his days and nights to his sketches. This led him to ruin, and Audubon found himself in a debt prison.
After getting free, the artist painted river ships, drew road signs and even taught dance, but continued to create exotic birds in huge albums, where he depicted them almost in half of human growth.

In 1818, Théodore Géricault read a book about the terrible story of the raft of Méduse: the French frigate crashed, of the 147 passengers set adrift on an open raft, only 15 survived – the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades; some resorted to cannibalism to survive. This terrible story delighted the artist: he finally found the plot for a big painting! Big in all senses: Géricault started working on a painting which was more than seven meters long.
But the artist was only 27. How could he keep himself from going to parties and devote all his time and effort to the painting? Géricault shaved his head bald. At that time, it was impossible to dally with ladies, drink sparkling wine and crack jokes in the salons, while having a buzz cut. He locked himself in the studio with the help of his socially unacceptable hairstyle.