Antique Cologne
Cologne ... Many have heard about this German city on the Rhine, a major center of medieval European culture. The well-known Cologne Cathedral is an unsurpassed monument of Gothic architecture.…

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Eugene Delacroix - Goethe's Faust lithographs
In the 1820s, the artist Eugene Delacroix was in the prime of his creative power. He is 30 years old, he is a recognized master, who created the paintings that…

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"Denial of confession" by Ilya Repin
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov is a great Russian historical painter, but all he has to say about him is not enough: the national genius embodied in the art of Surikov. The…

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Caravaggio - "an excellent rival of nature"
At the turn of the XVI – XVII centuries in Italy, famous for great painters, poets, scientists and humanists, a very peculiar artist appeared. His paintings caused a genuine sensation.…

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Venice School of Painting
The heritage of the Venetian school of painting is one of the most striking pages in the history of the Italian Renaissance. The “Pearl of the Adriatic” - a quaintly…

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inhuman tension.

“The Adoration of the Magi” by Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci

In March 1481, the monks of the Florentine monastery of San Donato and Scopetto turned to the notary Pietro of Vinci with a request to find an artist who could write an altar painting for the cathedral. Pietro immediately offered the services of his son Leonardo, who recently graduated from Verrocchio. At the same time the contract was concluded, where the working conditions were determined. The artist was given the task of painting a 2.5×2.5 m size in oil on a blackboard in two – two and a half years. The plot of the Adoration of the Magi is one of the episodes of the Gospel legend. Continue reading

“Raft” Medusa “” Theodore Gericault

The artist Theodore Gericault, the founder of romanticism in France, became famous for a number of works, and especially the painting “The Jellyfish Raft”. She became no less well-known than Rembrandt’s Night Watch, The Oath of the Horatii of David, and Boyary Morozov of Surikov. The artist masterfully expressed in her deep thoughts about the fate of people, by force of circumstances set on the verge of death, could say weighty words about modernity. That is why the historian of the middle of the last century, Jules Michelet, recalling the picture, said the right words: “I said and repeat again: at that moment Gericault was France.” Continue reading

Vincent van Gogh in Holland

In 1879, when the epidemic of typhoid fever and fever in a multitude mowed people, Borinage’s miners marveled at the young lord, who fearlessly avoided the infected shacks, nursing the sick and maimed. This man was Vincent Van Gogh. Traveling over half of Europe, he ended up as a missionary at the coal mines. When the disaster at the mine was followed by a massive explosion of indignation of the miners, Vincent, their defender, entered into open conflict with the administration. “For almost two years,” he wrote bitterly about this to his brother, “I had to go through something in Borinage that did not look like a pleasure walk.” The unrest of the miners was suppressed, and the obstinate preacher was denied a seat. Continue reading

"Denial of confession" by Ilya Repin
The man was brought to execution. After several months of imprisonment, he was pale. Around the roaring crowd. - Villain, crazy! In the king himself shot! - God saved his…

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James Whistler: “I am an artist and“ born ”in Petersburg”
James Whistler, an Anglo-American artist, was born July 11, 1834 in Lowell, the industrial city of the United States. Staying in Russia largely affected the formation of his talent. Whistler…

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"Boris Godunov" and "Vasily Shuisky" by Ivan Shtenglin
In the middle of the 18th century, the interest of the Russian society in national history increased. Ivan Shtenglin, a master from Augsburg, Germany, who worked in Russia, completed from…

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