5 Facts About Great Painters You Probably Didn't Know

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By Luis Gustavo. See how we research and review our content.

Vincent van Gogh made about 2,100 artworks in roughly a decade, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in his last two years. The fame those canvases now carry arrived long after he was gone.

Behind famous paintings there is usually illness, debt, rivalry or plain bad luck. Here are five facts about great painters, with a few popular myths trimmed back where the record does not support them, followed by two closer looks.

1. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime

The sale people have in mind is The Red Vineyard, shown at the Les XX exhibition in Brussels in 1890 and bought by the Belgian painter Anna Boch for 400 francs. It is the only painting known by name that Van Gogh sold in his lifetime, and it now hangs in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

The word “only” deserves a hedge, though. Some writers have argued that he sold at least a couple of other works, and the 400-franc sale is simply the best documented one. Either way, the broad point holds: he took up painting in 1881, died on July 29, 1890 at age 37, and relied on financial support from his brother Theo.

2. Da Vinci left many works unfinished

Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the monks of San Donato a Scopeto around 1481, is the classic example. He left it unfinished when he went to Milan to offer his services to Ludovico Sforza. A model for a bronze horse was finished in Milan, but in November 1494 the metal intended for it was given away to be made into a cannon, so the horse was never cast.

Even the Mona Lisa was a long-running project. He began the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo by October 1503 and kept working on it into his later years. One suggestion is that paralysis in his right hand late in life may help explain why some works were left incomplete. The result is a surprisingly small body of paintings, fewer than 25 attributed major works.

3. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel almost entirely alone

Pope Julius II commissioned the ceiling, the contract was signed on May 8, 1508, and the finished work was unveiled on October 31, 1512. The promised fee was 3,000 ducats. The scheme grew beyond the twelve apostles first proposed and now includes over 300 figures.

Two popular details need correcting. Michelangelo’s early biographers Vasari and Condivi say he painted standing, head tilted back, not lying on his back. As for working alone, he tried to bring in experienced fresco painters from Florence but reportedly could not find helpers who suited him, and the painting itself is credited to him. The freestanding scaffolding, though, was built by Piero Roselli, so the project was not entirely a solo effort.

4. Frida Kahlo painted mostly self-portraits out of physical necessity

On September 17, 1925, a bus Kahlo was riding in was struck by an electric streetcar. She suffered a fractured pelvis, a spine broken in three places, a broken right leg and a crushed right foot, among other injuries. She spent a month in hospital and two months at home, much of it in a plaster corset and on bed rest.

To pass the time, her mother had a special easel made so she could paint lying down, her father lent her some oil paints, and a mirror was placed above the easel. She painted herself, her sisters and school friends, and later explained that she painted herself because she was often alone and knew herself best. Estimates of her total output range from under 150 to about 200 paintings.

5. The Mona Lisa was once stolen

The painting vanished from the Louvre on August 21, 1911. It was reported missing the next day by the painter Louis Béroud, and the museum closed for a week. The thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, a former Louvre employee who had helped build the painting’s glass case. He hid in the building on a day it was closed and walked out with a panel only 77 by 53 centimeters, believing, as an Italian patriot, that it belonged in Italy.

The investigation wandered far afield: the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and named his friend Pablo Picasso, and both were later cleared. Peruggia kept the painting in his apartment for about two years and was caught in December 1913 when he tried to sell it to Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi in Florence. It returned to the Louvre on January 4, 1914. Worldwide press coverage of the theft and the recovery is widely credited with turning a famous painting into one of the most recognized artworks anywhere.

How wet plaster set Michelangelo’s working pace

The ceiling is true fresco, meaning pigment goes onto damp lime plaster and becomes part of the wall as it dries. That forces a rhythm: each day a fresh patch of plaster, called a giornata, was laid, painted before it set, and its edges scraped back at the start of the next session. Early on the plaster grew mildew because it was too wet, and Giuliano da Sangallo showed how to remove it.

The chapel is about 35 meters long and 14 wide, with the vault roughly 20 meters above the floor. Michelangelo painted the Genesis scenes in reverse chronological order, starting with the Drunkenness of Noah.

The letters that built Van Gogh’s reputation after 1890

Van Gogh and Theo exchanged letters from 1872 until 1890, and those pages became the backbone of his posthumous story. Theo’s widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, arranged to publish them, with some appearing in 1906 and 1913 and most in 1914.

His work had been shown publicly as early as August 1885, in shop windows in The Hague, but it was in the early twentieth century that his reputation grew, partly through the Fauves and German Expressionists. Fame is often assembled by other people, a theme also found in the lives of famous writers.

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