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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
10 facts about the picture of Aivazovsky “The Ninth Wave”
We continue the project “The History of One Picture.” In it we tell about the most famous canvases from Petersburg museums. Today – “The Ninth Wave” by Ivan Aivazovsky.
Fact one. The author.
The great Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky has Armenian roots. His ancestors bore the name Ayvazyan. He himself was recorded in the register as Hovhannes Ayvazyan. And his father signed the name “Gaivazovsky.” The same name when entering the art school and used the future painter. A few years later, he decided to drop the first letter – and became Aivazovsky.
Fact two. Official. Continue reading
Fayum portraits: posthumous images of contemporaries of Christ that have come down to our days
Fayum portraits – ancient Roman provincial portraits, named after the Egyptian oasis Fayum, where they were found. The Greeks, who settled in Egypt in the period of 1 century BC. – 3rd century AD, they used such portraits in their funerary cult, placing them on shrouds in approximately the same way as today on the monuments they make photos. In our review, 20 of the 800 portraits known today, which depict contemporaries of Christ.
The first description of the funeral portraits dates back to 1615, when the Italian explorer Pietro della Valle brought two portraits from Saccara-Memphis to Europe from the oasis. Today they are stored in the collection of the State Art Collection of Dresden. Continue reading
