Maria Peitcheva: 161 books

Rembrandt was one of the greatest draftsmen in the history of art. About 1400 attributed to him drawings survive, and probably at least an equivalent number have been lost. He made comparatively few preparatory studies for his paintings and even fewer highly finished drawings - gifts for friends and...

Although Dürer lived five hundred years ago, today we are happy that many of his works have survived. While he was alive, Dürer has published several hundred engravings on which are appeared his initials. It is impossible today to know how many of his works are lost, but those that have survived,...

Leonardo possessed a greedy curiosity and desire for discovery of unknown worlds. Only observation, says Leonardo, is the key to knowledge and understanding. In his Studies for the Nativity, he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant, probably in preparation for the main...

Raffaello Sanzio (Santi, Raphael) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect and designer. His work along with that of his older contemporaries Leonardo and Michelangelo defined the High Renaissance style in central Italy. He was a popular personality, famous, wealthy, and honored. His posthumous...

John Singer Sargent was an American leading portrait painter of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created about 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu,...

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter, whose primary subject was the female body. His paintings, murals, and sketches are marked by a sensual eroticism, which is especially apparent in his pencil drawings. He was Vienna's most famous advocator of Art Nouveau, or, as the style was identified...

Leonardo possessed a greedy curiosity and desire for discovery of unknown worlds. Only observation, says Leonardo, is the key to knowledge and understanding. In his Studies for the Nativity, he studied different poses and gestures of the mother and her infant, probably in preparation for the main...

A sculptor, architect, painter, and graphic artist, Michelangelo cannot be assigned definitely to any of those genres. The drawing as a medium for developing new ideas and conveying artistic thoughts, however, is the connecting link to and the basis of all his creative activities. During the Renaissance,...

Konstantin Andreyevich Somov (1869 – 1939) was a Russian artist associated with the Mir iskusstva. Somov studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Ilya Repin from 1888 to 1897. While at the Academy, he befriended Alexandre Benois, who would introduce him to Sergei Diaghilev and Léon Bakst....

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is best known as a chronicler of the nightlife of late 19th century Paris. He used to frequent the nightclubs and cafés of Montmartre, befriending the dancers and prostitutes, making countless sketches as they comb their hair or just lie in bed. Toulouse-Lautrec did not...

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he produced over 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, the majority created in the last two years of his life. They include portraits, self-portraits,...

Giovanni Boldini was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. His paintings and drawings showed his subject in soft-focus, elongated, in movement, alive, and sophisticated. He painted mostly portraits and also landscapes in the naturalistic style of his day,...

Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the movements of Realism and Naturalism. Millet portrayed the gravity, hardship, and dignity of common agricultural...

Paul Cézanne was the leading figure in the revolution toward abstraction in modern painting. His influence on the course of modern art, particularly on the development of cubism, is enormous and deep. In his early career, he was strongly influenced by Delacroix and Courbet. Through Pissarro, Cezanne...