In 2015, a geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso questioned the attribution of the painting Virgin of the Rocks from National Gallery in London to Leonardo da Vinci. It was all about... flowers. The flora in the Louvre version of the piece is painted as perfectly as possible, while the British version contains some irregularly-shaped and unidentifiable flowers. It is unlikely that one and the same person could paint a grotto so neatly in one work and so unnaturally in another. Especially when taking into account Leonardo being immersed in the comprehension of nature and depicting it. By the way, the London painting had long been considered a work of the master’s students and da Vinci's authorship was asserted only in 2010. And the National Gallery refused to comment on a new research.

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.

In 1832, the paintings of two famous artists, who had a quarrel a year before because their paintings had been hung side-by-side, ended up on the same wall of the hall at the Royal Academy of arts. Constable's Opening of Waterloo Bridge was a complex work which had been in progress for ten years. Turner's Helvoetsluys seemed to be a simpler seascape. Shortly before the opening, Constable was adding final touches to his piece. Turner walked in, looked at both paintings, and then added one detail to his one – a little red buoy swaying on the waves. The bright spot instantly attracted the attention of the audience. Constable complained that Turner had been in and 'fired a gun'. 180 years after the first conflict of these landscape artists, their "controversial" paintings were hung side-by-side again.

In 2008, Tiepolo's name was the talk of the art world: a picture of the great master was found in the attic of a French estate! Shy grandparents of the current owners prudently hid the luxurious topless lady depicted on the canvas. Thus they perfectly preserved the picture! It is believed that it was ordered by the Russian Empress Elizabeth to decorate the Winter Palace, as there are similar images of the series there. The canvas was called "Portrait of a Lady as Flora" and soon sold at Christie's auction for 4,227,780 dollars, almost three times "overlapping" the considerable estimate.

One day, in the gallery of the collector spouses from New York Maya and Anatoly Bekkerman, the bell rang: the outfitter’s granddaughter offered them a picture, which Fyodor Chaliapin paid 100 years ago with ... for a tailcoat! The lady spelled the surname of the great singer as "Shatapkin", but the canvas was undoubtedly of Korovin's brush. The creators were friends, Korovin painted a portrait of Chaliapin’s daughters, so he had several works by the artist. Four of them were used to pay the merchant for the clothes.

Gerrit van Uylenburgh, Saskia's (Rembrandt's first wife) relative, was a successful art dealer. Not the fairest one, though. He took whole collections of paintings from his French colleagues for sale in Holland. He hired local artists to make replicas of those paintings. The forgeries then were sold, while the originals were sent back to Paris: Sorry, but your French masterpieces do not sell well here.

The funniest thing is that in such a way, Gerrit van Uylenburgh messed around with the Parisian art dealer Everhard Jabach. And Jabach was also known for selling forgeries. That is, there is a high possibility that Uylenburgh sold replicas of replicas.

The swindler had to flee the country because of the rumours and notoriety. Uylenburgh ended up in England and eventually managed to become a conservator of the royal collection of Charles II.

In 1993, the Tretyakov Gallery acquired Levitan's Portrait of a Little Boy Joseph Levin, made in the early 1880s. That 6-year-old boy with an inquisitive look would become a celebrity during Levitan's lifetime: Joseph Levin would later become a famous pianist Josef Lhévinne. Due to his extraordinary abilities, he would be taken to the senior "professorial" class of the Moscow Conservatory; he would be the first in his class, leaving his classmates Rachmaninoff and Scriabin behind. Later Joseph would go to Dresden to study under Anton Rubinstein, and in 1919 he would move to New York, where he would close his days, leaving a lot of grateful students and a short book Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing, that is considered a classic of musical and pedagogical literature.

Amedeo Modigliani, the outstanding Italian expressionist artist, became interested in painting and drawing in a very early age. He made his final decision to become an artist at the age of eleven after a heavy pleurisy, when, lying delirious, Amedeo decided: if he survived, then he would devote himself to painting. And he kept his word.

The American author of world-famous animation characters, Walt Disney painted his first drawings on a wall, being 4 years old. Young Walt spent his childhood on the farm and most liked to draw animals. At the age of eight, he received the first nickel for drawing the veterinary's favourite horse.

When Renoir worked, he didn't notice anything around. He would come to the forest at Fontainebleau, set up his easel and forget about everything. After he noticed the deer gathering behind him, he started bringing them bread to eat. That was a big mistake. Since then, the artist found them every single time he tried to paint: "They started crowding behind my back, nuzzling against me and breathing into my neck. I had to be rough sometimes ... would you finally let me paint or not?"
But once, having come to the usual place, Renoir did not see the deer. They were scared away by hunters. The artist was indignant: "I wanted to shoot those blockheads in red caftans! If hell exists, then I know how they will be punished: the deer will chase them until they run themselves out of breath!"

Paul Cézanne had his own creative method of work. He was always dissatisfied with himself and therefore worked for a very long time, and his models had to stay in one position for long hours. And the artist could leave a work before it was finished because it wasn’t perfect! So, Ambroise Vollard posed for Cézanne for 115 (!) times, but he saw his portrait. Cézanne postponed the painting to get back to it later when he "would achieve something". Well, except for he liked, "how the shirt chest is painted". Cézanne could only let his model to take a break under the force of the argument that the model would get tired and therefore become a bad poser. At the same time, the artist demanded complete silence at work: even the dog's barking could prevent him.

The impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte was better known as a patron of art. Having inherited his father's fortune, he supported still unrecognized artists of the time: he bought works, paid for the workshops (for example, Monet), organized exhibitions and auctions where he exhibited paintings from his own collection and bought them at a high price – a marketing move! His hobby were orchids, yachts building, and textile design. And in the honorary "List of outstanding philatelists" he is listed as the "father of philately", his stamp collection is now in the British Museum. He willed a collection of 68 impressionist works (Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Cézanne, Manet, etc.) to France, now the paintings are a part of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the remainder is in the D'Orsay Museum.

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.

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.

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.

Once, one of the Rubens' disciples fell onto a freshly painted canvas and damaged it, smudging the whole fragment. He asked another Rubens' disciple, the then unknown Anthony van Dyck, to redo that fragment. The next day Rubens was admiring his own (as he thought at first) painting ... And when the deception was revealed, he praised his disciple with the same admiration! Soon, van Dyck became Ruben's right-hand man and some customers were surprised at how the master's late works changed – as if the brush was sometimes held in someone else's hand! However, it is still uncertain which of Rubens' paintings were finished (or painted entirely) by van Dyck or his other disciples.

In 1564, the famous Italian artist Jacopo Tintoretto, cunningly won the Scuola Grande Di San Rocco commission. His competitors were the best Italian painters of that time, but Tintoretto successfully implemented the "multi-way combination": instead of a sketch, he presented a finished work Saint Roch. Moreover, knowing that the statute of the Scuola (school) di San Rocco forbids refusing gifts, the master wrote on his painting "to Saint Roch from Jacopo Tintoretto". They had no choice but to give the commission to the inventive artist! And he got something to do for the next 23 years: it took so much time to create 69 compositions.

The third place on the list of the most expensive living female artists is taken by Yayoi Kusama with her polka dots obsession. There are polka dots on her canvases, objects and even people... Actually, "obsession" here is far from being a metaphor: the Japanese artist admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital and confessed: "I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease. If it wasn't for art, I would have killed myself long ago." Indeed, the saving art is polka-dotted.

"When I accept a picture by myself, it's more serious than if it were judged by all juries in the world!" this was the artistic creed of the perfectionist Paul Cézanne. Because of the fact that creating one picture took a very long time, Cézanne could not paint live flowers. He complained that they fade too fast, and the ripening fruit change colours. Therefore, he preferred to depict artificial flowers. But you can’t call the flowers by Cézanne artificial, can you?

Alphonse Mucha made his way to his luck for a long time, and he became famous literally in one night. His success was brought by the unsurpassed Sarah Bernhardt, who approved his poster sketch, in which she acted in main role in the play "Gismonda". After the posters were spread, Mucha instantly became famous. It is rumored that the Parisians liked his posters so much that they bought additional copies from the distributors, and if they did not manage to agree with them, they stole posters, cutting them off in the dark from the walls with razor blades. Well, turning ordinary objects into works of art was a special gift of the famous artist.