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…

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The tragedy of the author of the most famous portrait of Chekhov: How he lost his family and paintings, and why he got to Solovki Osip Braz
Over several centuries of development, Russian culture has presented the world with a galaxy of brilliant painters, whose works are included in the world treasury of fine art. Among them…

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How Peter Konchalovsky managed to avoid repression and why the artist was called the Soviet Cezanne
Not many painters who disobeyed the socialist regime in times of bloody repression managed to escape punishment. Today I would like to recall the name of one of them -…

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considered

Fantastic take-off and the tragic end of the discoverer of Russian porcelain Dmitry Vinogradov

Russia has always been famous for outstanding talents, however, the indisputable fact is that these people did not always have sweet and free in their homeland. Russian history remembers many geniuses whose life was ruined by the domestic system. A terrible fate fell on the lot of Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov, rightfully considered the father of Russian porcelain, who spent the last days of his life chained to a kiln.

A master was born in the ancient Russian city of Suzdal in 1720. In the early 1730s, the boy’s father, seeing his great inclinations for science in his son, sent him with his elder brother Jacob to study in Moscow, where they studied at the Spassky School at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy. I must say, this school was one of the most authoritative educational institutions of the state of that time. At one time, many outstanding personalities studied in it. Continue reading

Secrets of the painting “A Lady with a Parrot by the Window”: How the Smile of a Heroine and a Bird are Connected
Caspar Netscher is a Dutch artist of German descent, an outstanding portrait painter, and also a master of depicting everyday scenes of the Dutch elite. He also developed a technique…

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“Love Letter” by Jan Vermeer: Why the lute is central to the picture
At the first glance at Jan Vermeer's famous painting “Love Letter”, the name seems far-fetched, because the letter itself is hardly noticeable. But the lute in the hands of a…

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7 beloved women by Pablo Picasso
“If he had not become an artist, he would have become Don Juan,” once said a friend of Pablo Picasso, the French playwright Jacques Cocteau. And it’s hard to disagree…

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