four-year pensioner’s trip
BOY WITH A TUBE by Pablo Picasso
The most expensive painting in the world?
In 2004, at an Sotheby’s auction, an unknown buyer acquired the work of Pablo Picasso “Boy with a Pipe” (Garson and la Pipe) in 1905 for $ 104.168 million. The starting price of work – 70 million dollars – an unprecedented amount for the art market. The high cost of the work is explained, firstly, by the impeccable provenance of the painting, and secondly, by its uniqueness: Picasso’s early works appear on the market extremely rarely, almost all the pictures of the pink and blue periods are in museum collections.
The Boy with the Pipe was written in 1905, when the artist lived and worked, and very successfully, in Paris. Nevertheless, on Picasso’s “creative calendar” this period is the earliest, pre-subist and, by the way, the most valuable. The canvas belongs to the rare for any master category of iconic paintings: it marked the artist’s transition from the “blue” period to the “pink” period. Continue reading
“The Last Supper”: the story of the famous fresco by Leonardo da Vinci
The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous images of the last meal of Jesus Christ with his disciples. He began work on it in 1495 or 1496, and graduated in 1498. This masterpiece of the Renaissance has been praised, studied and replicated for over 500 years, and the fresco itself is still on the wall of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The publication Business Insider talked about it with the historian and author of the book “Leonardo da Vinci and The Last Supper” Ross King.
At one time, the fresco was very popular.
A copy of the frescoes by Italian artist Dzhampetrino. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Despite the fact that today Da Vinci is known as the author of various inventions, manuscripts, drawings and sketches, it was the Last Supper that ensured him fame during his lifetime. Continue reading
“Morning in a pine forest” by Ivan Shishkin
The forest landscape with bear cubs playing on a fallen tree is perhaps the most famous work of the artist. Here are just the landscape design idea Ivan Shishkin suggested another artist – Konstantin Savitsky. He also wrote a bear with three bear cubs: bears could not succeed in the forest shishkin’s connoisseur.
Shishkin was immaculately versed in the forest flora, noticed the slightest mistakes in the drawings of his students — either the birch bark or the pine tree looked like a fake one. However, people and animals in his works have always been rare. Continue reading
