Creativity for the Mentally Ill: A Book That Changed History
Sometimes you can hear such a statement that in order to create a masterpiece, you must be either a genius or a madman. Tarragon - the hero of the play…

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Little-known facts about the dark side of the brilliant artist Caravaggio
He was one of the great masters of baroque, and his difficult life in many respects determined his creation, which today is admired throughout the world. And Caravaggio himself believed…

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What is special about the landscapes that are called the most Italian: Veduta and Capriccio
History did not preserve the name of the tourist that the first one wanted to take away from Italy a picturesque "postcard" in memory of the trip and thereby laid…

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How Pavel Tretyakov competed with the emperor

Before the revolution, patronage of the arts was considered not only charitable, but also beneficial for the donor himself, and the point here was not taxes at all. According to the ideas of merchants in the old days, this activity avoided the terrible temptation – the power of money. Most often, wealthy industrialists became patrons of shelters, hospitals, and educational institutions. At first, the partners and competitors laughed at the Tretyakov brothers’ passion for painting, but time, of course, put everything in its place.

Pavel and Sergey Tretyakov were the eldest children in a well-known merchant family. Continue reading

10 skillful fakes that museums took for originals

Artistic fakes are a very real threat that museums constantly have to contend with. Fake artifacts appear in many museums from time to time, which can be displayed for several years before specialists realize that this is a fake. For counterfeiters, the high price tags attached to these fakes are often an incentive to continue to create fakes. Art fraudsters often go to great lengths to trick museums into acquiring their work. Some fakes are so good that it is difficult for historians and archaeologists to distinguish them from real things. Among the museums that became victims of fakes is even the famous Louvre Museum, where for many years successful copies were exhibited instead of the originals, and no one even knew about it. Continue reading

Ciphers, signs and self-portraits: How artists of the past signed their paintings

Not every masterpiece of painting contains the signature of the artist. There were reasons for this, both at the dawn of the Renaissance and in the modern era; they are now. Some of the works were “signed” by the masters in unusual ways – symbols in which an indication of the identity of the author was hidden. Bones, butterflies, cats appeared in the paintings for a reason.

Why it was not customary to sign a work before

Having finished work, put your signature in the lower right corner of the picture – a custom that entered the practice of artists during the early Renaissance. Alas, authorship of earlier works is often not possible to establish – primarily because of the lack of signatures on them. Continue reading

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Who are the model women who inspired great artists
“Model” - this word is involuntarily associated with the image of a sensual woman with a languid look and a gorgeous figure. In his memory immediately appear the masterpieces of…

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3 curious facts about famous works of art
Different people perceive works of art differently, and the viewer's point of view can radically differ from what the artist himself put into his work. And many famous paintings have…

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What is the secret of the appeal of romances: The history of the genre from Spanish to cruel
Touching songs performed by Larisa Ogudalova, a dowager, are just one of the signs of the romance, if we take into account its entire history. But once upon a time…

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