He fell asleep and the monsters woke. In Goya's image owls and bats swarm from the dark behind a sleeping man. The desk reads: the sleep of reason produces monsters. When reason sleeps, monsters wake. every painting lies. #arthistory #goya

This dancer became a painter. In Renoir's Dance at Bougival, the woman in the red bonnet is believed to be Suzanne Valadon, a model who taught herself and became a major painter in her own right. The muse becomes the maker. every painting lies. #arthistory #renoir

This painting started a fight. El Greco's Christ blazes in red, mobbed by a crowd, and the church that ordered it fought the bill, objecting too many heads rise above Christ's. He did it his way. Genius rarely asks permission. every painting lies. #arthistory #elgreco

Her smile was a scandal. Vigee Le Brun painted herself as artist and mother, smiling warm and open when portraits kept a closed, solemn mouth. The queen's painter, soon exiled. Joy itself can break a rule. every painting lies. #arthistory #womeninart

You have seen these hands everywhere. But Durer's Praying Hands was never a finished work, just a study for an altarpiece that later burned. And the touching two-brothers backstory is pure invention. The fragment outlived the whole. every painting lies. #arthistory #durer

Raphael died before finishing this. His Transfiguration splits in two: Christ rising in light above, human panic below. His last work, unfinished at his death in 1520, hung above his coffin. We all leave our best unfinished. every painting lies. #arthistory #raphael

This portrait ended a marriage. Henry VIII picked Anne of Cleves from Holbein's flattering 1539 portrait, was let down in person, and annulled it within six months. Flattery has an expiry date. every painting lies. #arthistory #henryviii