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.

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.

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.

The "Retrospective Bust Of A Woman", created by Salvador Dalí in 1933 for the Surrealist exhibition in Pierre Colle Gallery (Paris) is quite original. On the porcelain bust of a woman, there is a loaf of bread (a surreal cap!) and a bronze ink-pot – the image of L'Angélus by Jean-Francois Millet. Plus, ants on the face, a paper "scarf", corn on the shoulders – well, just a parody of fashion! The original of which was spoiled... by the dog of Picasso. The artist visited the exhibition with his pet, and the dog devoured the loaf! The whole idea was actually wasted... Now its reconstruction with a fake loaf is in the Salvador Dalí Theater Museum in Figueres.

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.

Towards the end of his life, Thomas Gainsborough often quarrelled with his wife Margaret Burr. With age, she became stingier and more grumbling. Gainsborough would flare up at the slightest provocation and curse. And yet, he was always the first one who would try to make it up with his wife: he would write a note of repentance, sign it with the name of his favourite dog, ‘Fox’, and address it to his wife’s pet spaniel, ‘Tristram’. This forbidden trick always worked with Margaret. She would immediately start writing an answer to Gainsborough's dog: "My own dear Fox, you are always loving and good, and I am a naughty little female ever to worry you as I too often do, so we will kiss and say no more about it. Your own affectionate, Tris."

English landscape painter John Constable exhibited his Hay Wain (which is now considered one of the greatest English paintings) in 1921. However, back then it was given a cool reception: critics considered the artist's energetic brushstrokes careless. The Frenchman Théodore Géricault, who at that time was on a visit to London, came home and praised his English colleague in front of a dealer John Arrowsmith. The latter bought four of the artist's paintings, including The Hay Wain, and it paid off: it was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824, winning a gold medal. Moreover, Eugène Delacroix repainted the background of his Massacre de Scio after seeing the artist's "careless brushstrokes".

Ellen Andrée is a famous Parisian actress who performed in the Palais-Royal and in the bar at the Folies-Bergère. She was a model for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, and Edgar Degas; she also spent time with the artists and poets in the café New Athens, which was unprecedented audacity for the time. Ladies could visit drinking establishments only accompanied.
The painting L'Absinthe, for which Andrée posed together with the artist Marcellin Desboutin, also negatively affected her reputation. It caused a big fuss; the painting was called disgusting and immoral, they saw a challenge in it and, of course, suspected models of heavy drinking. Edgar Degas had to make an official statement that neither Ellen, nor Marcellin was an alcoholic – they just perfectly played their roles. To make up for such a blow to her reputation, Degas even offered Ellen one of his works as a gift.

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.

Once Auguste Renoir and Édouard Manet painted next to each other. They stayed in Claude Monet's house in Argenteuil and set up their easels in the garden, while the owner was doing his chores. After this joint plein-air, Édouard Manet, rather embarrassingly, asked Claude to somehow suggest Renoir to quit painting. The poor fellow had no talent at all!

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.

Born in Parma and known as Parmigianino in honour of his hometown, Francesco Mazzola (1503-1540) lived only 37 years. During his lifetime, he was called the "reincarnation of Raphael" and was revered for his great talent. Thus, in 1527, the mercenaries of Charles V captured Rome, while Parmigianino was working on the altar image, "The Vision of Saint Jerome". The soldiers burst into the workshop, but when they saw the artist at work, they did not touch him or the pictures. However, later they employed him much with extra work... Moreover, the artist also burned with passion for alchemy, and this caused his delay of an important commission from the church community of Santa Maria della Steccata, and was taken into custody. After the release, he immediately left Parma, but did not abandon his addiction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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)!

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.