Picture Girls: Muses and Artists from Raphael to Picasso

Anna Matveeva is a prose writer, a finalist of the “Big Book” and “National Bestseller” awards; the author of books “The Enviable Feeling of Vera Stenina,” “The Nineties, Nine Ninety,” “Lolotta and Other Paris Stories,” “Hidden Rivers,” and others. In her book “Picture Girls,” Anna Matveeva turns to the fates of models and muses of famous artists.

Who were the women who look at us from the canvases of Botticelli and Bryullov, Matisse and Dalí, Rubens and Manet? They lived in different centuries, had different origins and such dissimilar temperaments—someone didn’t want to yield in mastery to the great artists who painted their portraits, while someone else was simply content to be near them.

“My heroines are not always models in the strict sense—they are girls from paintings, ‘picture girls.’ The fate of each of them is inseparably tied to the fate of the master. And when telling about Fornarina, you can’t avoid talking about Raphael; and the story of Olga Khlokhova can’t go without mentioning Picasso. Another artist could have become Botticelli without his Simonetta, Rembrandt without Saskia, and Modigliani without Jeanne.”