★ Written by a finalist of multiple prestigious literary awards, it tells the stories of muses behind art history with documentary rigor, blending literary merit and historical value.

★ Focuses on 10 pairs of artists and their muses, including masters like Velázquez and Munch, uncovering the unknown fates of the figures behind famous paintings.

★ Continues the narrative style of the popular documentary work Pictorial Girls, exploring the profound connection between models and creators, with a highly compelling theme.

This book collects 10 essays focusing on the models of famous artists, continuing the discussion about the women immortalized on renowned canvases. These documentary stories read like gripping narratives, containing not only the joys and sorrows of ordinary human life but also echoes of global upheavals and catastrophes. Anna Matveeva this time features Diego Velázquez, Jacques-Louis David, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ivan Kramskoi, John Singer Sargent, Edvard Munch, Boris Kustodiev, Fernand Léger, Arkady Plastov, and Anatoly Zverev as her subjects, and alongside these protagonists stand their muses.

Anna Matveeva is a renowned writer and finalist of the National Bestseller Award, Big Book Award, and Yasnaya Polyana Award. She has also won numerous authoritative prizes, including the Belkin Literary Prize in 2001 for her novella “The Dyatlov Pass”, the Lo Stellato Award in 2004 for her short story “Saint Helena Island”, the Yuri Kazakov Award in 2011 for her novella “The Circumstance of Time”, and the Bazhov Literary Prize, among others. She is also the author of the text for the 2024 Total Dictation event.

Matveeva’s writing career began in the mid-1990s, and her works have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines such as “Novy Mir” (New World), “Zvezda” (Star), “Druzhba Narodov” (Friendship of Nations), “Oktyabr” (October), “Znamya” (Banner), and “Ural”. One of her most famous works is the novella “The Dyatlov Pass”, which tells the true story of a group of tourists in the Northern Ural Mountains. Due to its tragic and mysterious nature, it has been adapted into a television series of the same name. In addition, Anna Matveeva has written novels such as “Est!” (Exists!), “The Enviable Feeling of Vera Stenina”, “Every Hundred Years”, and short story collections including “Wait, I’ll Die and Come Back”, “Citizens”, “Katya Goes to Sochi”, and “Armastan”.