Picture Girls

Anna Matveeva — a prose writer, finalist of the awards "Big Book" and "Clear Glade", author of the novels "Every Hundred Years", "The Dyatlov Pass, or The Secret of Nine", "The Desirable Feeling of Vera Stenina", collections "Katya Goes to... Sochi", "Nine Nineties", "Lolotta and Other Parisian Stories", "Hidden Rivers". In the book "Picture Girls", Anna Matveeva turns to the fates of muses and models of famous artists. Who were the women looking at us from the canvases of Botticelli and Bryullov, Matisse and Dali, Rubens and Manet? They lived in different centuries, had different origins and such diverse characters; some of them did not want to concede to the masters who painted their portraits, while for others it was enough to simply be near them. "My heroines are not always literally models, they are girls from paintings, 'picture girls'. The fate of each of them is inextricably linked with the fate of the master, and speaking of Fornarina, one cannot ignore Raphael, while the story of Olga Khokhlova will not proceed without mentioning Picasso; Botticelli could have been a completely different artist without his Simonetta, Rembrandt — without Saskia, and Modigliani — without Jeanne." (Anna Matveeva)