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".

Sir Joshua Reynolds, an English portrait and history painter, a representative of the English school of portraiture of the XVIII century, was never married. He proposed to the German artist Angelica Kauffman, who moved to London. Having been rejected and craving for revenge, he introduced her to the gigolo Frederick Brandt. The man got her into such a big mess that it got the whole Europe intrigued and inspired Victor Hugo to write his drama Ruy Blas.

In Moscow in May 2015, the Museum AZ has been opened, the museum of the artist Anatoly Zverev (1931-1986). "The best Russian drawer," according to Picasso, the master attracts with his special magic. A couple of years ago, Alika Costakis, the daughter of the famous collector George Costakis, presented more than 600 works for the future museum. In his memoirs, the collector also wrote about a romantic history: the enthusiastic, true artist Zverev was in love with Alika and one day he allegedly painted 57 her portraits! She did not pose, but did her ordinary household chores, and the master caught the cherished curves on the fly!

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.

At one time, Maurits Escher made attempts to translate Bach's works into a graphic language. However, when musicians came to him with a request to illustrate the cover of their new album, he categorically refused. The same cold shoulder received the leader of The Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, who wished to decorate his plate with an engraving "Verbum". However, many musicians did not feel confused about the artist’s position, and they used Escher's drawings without permission, which disturbed him very much.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Zinaida Serebryakova moved to France in search of work, after the revolutionary peasants plundered her family estate. However, Parisians liked modernist trends, not "romantic realism", the favourite and vivid style of the artist. She went so badly that she had to make paints for herself, as there was no way to buy them. Now her paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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.

When Paul Cézanne didn't like his own painting, he would just throw it out of the window. The gardener Auguste Blanc told how the old trees growing under the windows of the artist's studio were hung with unfinished still lives. Sometimes Paul would think about some 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; I think I'll work on that study some more," he asked his son, who brought to Aix-en-Provence a French art dealer Ambroise Vollard for new paintings.

At the age of 15, Arkhip Kuindzhi started studying art under Aivazovsky. A shy, full-bodied young man arrived in Feodosia wearing a shirt, a colourful vest, checkered pants bubbling on his knees, and a straw hat. The young Kuindzhi really amused Ivan Aivazovsky and his daughter Elena, who had a good laugh at his naive village daub and crimson face. Arkhip lived under the shed in the yard for two months, since he was not allowed into the studio. At the end of his "training" the master entrusted Kuindzhi to paint his fence (though he got some practical advice from Aivazovsky's disciple Adolf Faessler). Kuindzhi learned this lesson for life and Kuindzhi never refused anyone anything.

An unstudious student, Claude painted the covers of notebooks and drew cartoons of teachers. The latter were so good that by the age of 15 he was famous in his native Le Havre as a skillful caricaturist. They asked him to draw caricature portraits, and he did, this time for money: 20 francs! Soon the amusing drawings by Claude Monet were displayed in the window of the only art supplies store in the city. The young Monet glowed with pride seeing them.

They say, manuscripts do not burn, but pictures do... In his youth, Modigliani was so poor that he paid with his pictures to the hostess of the cafe, where he boarded daily. The kind woman always agreed to "barter", but at the same time (o woe to us, the admirers of Modigliani!) she actually used them to kindle her stove. We’ll never know how many paintings by the famous artist were burned in such a villainous manner!

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!".

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.

...According to the memoirs of their contemporaries, Raphael and Agostino Chigi (his richest customer) were friends. And yet, duty before friendship. Once Raphael painted several frescoes for Chigi. Having finished his work, the artist unexpectedly demanded to double the payment. At first, Agostino Chigi's cashier Julio Borghese refused to do that, but Raphael would not budge. "Call on the experts and you will see how moderate I am in my demands," he argued.
Knowing the strained relations between Raphael and Michelangelo, Borghese chose the latter to be an expert. Buonarroti came, slowly and silently examined the frescoes of his rival, and pointing to the head of one of the sibyls said, "That head alone is worth 100 ducats, the others are worth not less." He disliked Raphael, but would never allow himself to be biased.

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.