Francisco Goya (1746–1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era. This portrait was completed when Goya was 80 years old.
Armand Jean du Plessis, best known as Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) was a French clergyman, noble and statesman. Born to a family of the Poitou lesser nobility, by 1607 he had become Bishop of Luçon, and he soon entered politics. He worked to consolidate the royal power of King Louis XIII, and in 1624 – two years after being elevated to cardinal – he was made the King's chief minister. Richelieu was also a patron of the arts, establishing the Académie française, which is responsible for matters pertaining to the French language.
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910),usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.
A portrait of Antanas Smetona, the first President of Lithuania, a signatory to the Act of Independence of Lithuania, as well as the last President before the country's occupation by the Soviet Union in World War II. During his second term, he expanded the powers of the office and became an authoritarian head of state. Prior to the Soviet invasion, Smetona proposed armed resistance, but was overruled by his army. He fled the country, eventually emigrating to the United States. Smetona died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944. His remains are currently buried in Chardon, Ohio.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. After publishing his first novel, Poor Folk, at age 25, Dostoyevsky wrote (among others) eleven novels, three novellas, and seventeen short novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was a French poet best known for his collection Les Fleurs du mal (1857), which expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. The author also worked as an essayist, art critic, and translator; in the 1850s and 1860s, he published several translations of works by Edgar Allan Poe.
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement who is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. He is recognized for his poetry, including Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles, as well as the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo later changed his views and became a passionate supporter of republicanism; his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. His legacy has been honoured in many ways; for some years his portrait appeared on the 5-franc banknote.
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744 – 1818) was an 18th-century French painter best known for still lifes. She achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770, at the age of twenty-six.Despite the low status that still life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster’s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists.
Elizabeth Farren (c. 1759 – 1829) was an English actress of the late 18th century. She made her premiere in a performance of She Stoops to Conquer in 1777, retiring over twenty years later. Horace Walpole described her as the "most perfect actress" he had ever seen.
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands with her daughter and successor Princess Juliana, circa 1914. Wilhelmina was queen regnant from 1890 to 1948, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Outside the Netherlands she is primarily remembered for her role in the Second World War, in which she proved to be a great inspiration to the Dutch resistance, as well as a prominent leader of the Dutch government in exile. Juliana became queen regnant in 1948 after her mother's abdication and ruled until her own abdication in 1980, succeeded by her daughter, Beatrix.
Annika Beck (born 16 February 1994 in Gießen) is a German tennis player.Beck has won two singles and one doubles title on the WTA tour, as well as seven singles titles on the ITF circuit in her career. On 1 February 2016, she reached her best singles ranking of world number 39. On 23 May 2016, she peaked at world number 100 in the doubles rankings.
Ana Santos Aramburo (born 1957, Zaragoza) is the director of the National Library of Spain, since February 2013. Santos received a degree in geography and history from the University of Saragossa, and a diploma in Librarianship and Documentation from the Centre of Documentary Studies from the Ministry of Culture. Her thesis was “Artistic Documentation in the Archive of Notarial Protocols of Saragossa in the 17th century”.
Sir Noël Coward (1899–1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer. Coward published more than 50 plays, many of which have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, well over a dozen musical theatre works, screenplays, poetry, several volumes of short stories, a novel, and a three-volume autobiography.
Robert Sheehan (b. 1988) is an Irish actor who began his career in 2003. Since then he has been nominated for several awards for the TV series Misfits and Love/Hate.
Vexi Salmi is a popular Finnish lyricist who has become popular through the successes of the platinum-selling music artists for whom he writes. During his prolific career, he has written the lyrics for over 4,000 songs, more than 2,400 of which have been recorded by prominent artists such as Irwin Goodman, Jari Sillanpää, and Katri Helena. A music writer's award, the Vexi Salmi Award, is named after him.