Hermitage Museum — Saint Petersburg, Russia

A Russian businessman ordered this for the staircase of his Moscow house, along with a second panel to hang near it. Supposedly he got nervous about all the bare bodies, pulled out, then changed his mind and took them anyway.

Apparently this wasn't the only time he painted his wife dressed up as a goddess - it was something he kept coming back to.

He made this during the year he spent in an asylum in the south of France — apparently he kept painting almost the whole time he was there, mostly working from whatever the grounds and the valley around the place gave him to look at.

According to Wikipedia he came back to this years after finishing it and reworked large parts, including her face. It was also attacked with acid in a museum in the 1980s and took more than a decade to put right.

I read that some people who've studied this closely think the older man's two hands look different on purpose - one softer, like it's meant to read as a mother's touch, the other firmer. Once you notice it, it's hard to unsee.

Some historians think this one might not really be by the name the museum credits — more likely finished by a student, going by how stiffly the baby is posed. It's named for the family who owned it in Milan for most of the 1800s, which has nothing to do with who's actually pictured.

Made to order for a rich Russian collector's staircase, one of a pair — the other one has people dancing instead. Wikipedia reckons he worked with no sketches at all, straight onto the canvas, moving things around until it looked right.

He apparently got stuck on this one for months, until his studio partner told him to just repeat the German word for flood — Überflut — instead of thinking it through. He finished the whole painting three days after that, still repeating the word the whole time.