I'll post some of my favorite pieces and their stories.
David with the Head of Goliath - Caravaggio
Goliath's head in this painting is a self portrait of the artist.
Art History
Anthony Miller
Other urls found in this thread:
closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be
twitter.com
Christian White
La Pieta - Michelangelo
He sculpted this as a teenager. No one believed him so he snuck into the Vatican one night and carved his name on the sash on Mary's chest. When he got older he said he regretted it.
Julian Green
That is actually really interesting.
Blake Cruz
Susanna and the Elders - Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia was known for not romanticizing scenes from the bible. The picture on the right is an xray of the final painting. This was her original vision for the piece.
Jose Nguyen
best portrait ever
Ayden Peterson
Judith Beheading Holofernes - Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio
Another example of the realism of Artemisia's paintings. The left is Caravaggio's rendition of the same scene.
Owen Ross
Didn´t she gave her rapist´s face to Holofernes?
Oliver Young
Yep. Judith is a self portrait of herself.
Jaxson Lewis
Love this piece, I've heard that story as well. In person it's just as beautiful, but when I was there it was hard to get close enough to see where the inscription was. Also, at one point in the last few decades a madman came in and started hacking away at it with an axe. Now there's a barrier.
I always liked most the detail of the cloth, his ability to make stone look soft always impressed me.
Camden Roberts
Obligatory Ilya Repin's "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan" on November 16th, 1581 (1885).
This piece was always very emotional for me, especially the expression on Ivan's face.
Ivan the terrible was known as a mad tsar, he wasn't called "the terrible" for nothing. Some say the dude was actually clinically insane and was well known to be prone to violent outbursts. One night, after an argument with his most loved son and heir (for good reason on the son's part, Ivan had recently caused a miscarriage of his wife by beating her while she was pregnant), in a fit of rage he struck him in the head with his scepter, which he immediately regretted but which ultimately would cause his death.
Of course the less liked son would eventually inherit the throne, and after that one died leaving no heirs, Russia entered the time of troubles where 1/3rd of the population died in famine (~2 million people).