In almost every significant work of art there is a mystery, a double bottom or a secret story that you want to uncover.
Music on the buttocks
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1500-1510.
Fragment of a triptych
Disputes about the meanings and hidden meanings of the most famous work of the Dutch artist have not subsided since its appearance. On the right wing of the triptych called "Musical Hell" sinners are depicted who are tortured in the underworld with the help of musical instruments. One of them has notes imprinted on his buttocks. Oklahoma Christian University student Amelia Hamrick, who studied the painting, transposed the notation of the 16th century into a modern way and recorded "a song from the ass from hell, which is 500 years old."
Nude Mona Lisa
The famous "Gioconda" exists in two versions: the nude version is called "Monna Vanna", it was painted by the little-known artist Salai, who was a student and sitter of the great Leonardo da Vinci. Many art critics are sure that it was he who was the model for Leonardo's paintings "John the Baptist" and "Bacchus". There are also versions that dressed in a woman's dress, Salai served as the image of Mona Lisa herself.
Old Fisherman
In 1902, the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Chontvari painted the painting "Old Fisherman". It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the picture, but Tivadar laid a subtext in it, which was never disclosed during the life of the artist.
Few people thought of putting a mirror in the middle of the picture. In each person there can be both God (the right shoulder of the Old Man is duplicated) and the Devil (the left shoulder of the old man is duplicated).
Was there a whale?
Hendrik van Antonissen "Scene on the Shore".
It seemed like an ordinary landscape. Boats, people on the shore and the desert sea. And only an X-ray study showed that people gathered on the shore for a reason - in the original, they examined the carcass of a whale washed ashore.
However, the artist decided that no one would want to look at a dead whale and repainted the painting.
Two "Breakfasts on the Grass"
Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863.
Claude Monet, Breakfast on the Grass, 1865.
Artists Edouard Manet and Claude Monet are sometimes confused - after all, they were both French, lived at the same time and worked in the style of impressionism. Even the name of one of Manet's most famous paintings, "Breakfast on the Grass", Monet borrowed and wrote his "Breakfast on the Grass".
Twins at the Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498.
When Leonardo da Vinci wrote The Last Supper, he attached particular importance to two figures: Christ and Judas. He was looking for sitters for them for a very long time. Finally, he managed to find a model for the image of Christ among the young singers. Leonardo failed to find a sitter for Judas for three years. But one day he came across a drunkard lying in the gutter on the street. He was a young man who had been aged by heavy drinking. Leonardo invited him to a tavern, where he immediately began to write Judas from him. When the drunkard came to his senses, he told the artist that he had already posed for him once. It was a few years ago, when he sang in the church choir, Leonardo wrote Christ from him.
"Night Watch" or "Day Watch"?
Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642.
One of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, “The Performance of the Rifle Company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenbürg,” hung in different halls for about two hundred years and was discovered by art historians only in the 19th century. Since the figures seemed to stand out against a dark background, it was called the Night Watch, and under this name it entered the treasury of world art.
And only during the restoration, carried out in 1947, it turned out that in the hall the picture had managed to become covered with a layer of soot, which distorted its color. After clearing the original painting, it was finally revealed that the scene presented by Rembrandt actually takes place during the day. The position of the shadow from the left hand of Captain Kok shows that the duration of the action is no more than 14 hours.
capsized boat
Henri Matisse, "The Boat", 1937.
In the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1961, Henri Matisse's painting "The Boat" was exhibited. Only after 47 days did someone notice that the painting was hanging upside down. The canvas depicts 10 purple lines and two blue sails on a white background. The artist painted two sails for a reason, the second sail is a reflection of the first one on the surface of the water.
In order not to be mistaken in how the picture should hang, you need to pay attention to the details. The larger sail should be at the top of the painting, and the peak of the sail of the painting should be directed to the upper right corner.
Deception in a self-portrait
Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with a Pipe, 1889.
There are legends that Van Gogh allegedly cut off his own ear. Now the most reliable version is that van Gogh's ear was damaged in a small scuffle with the participation of another artist, Paul Gauguin.
The self-portrait is interesting because it reflects reality in a distorted form: the artist is depicted with a bandaged right ear, because he used a mirror when working. In fact, the left ear was damaged.
alien bears
Ivan Shishkin, "Morning in the Pine Forest", 1889.
The famous painting belongs not only to the brush of Shishkin. Many artists who were friends with each other often resorted to "the help of a friend", and Ivan Ivanovich, who had been painting landscapes all his life, was afraid that touching bears would not turn out the way he needed. Therefore, Shishkin turned to a familiar animal painter Konstantin Savitsky.
Savitsky painted perhaps the best bears in the history of Russian painting, and Tretyakov ordered his name to be washed off the canvas, since everything in the picture “beginning from the idea and ending with the execution, everything speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method peculiar to Shishkin.”
Innocent story "Gothic"
Grant Wood, "American Gothic", 1930.
Grant Wood's work is considered one of the strangest and most depressing in the history of American painting. The picture with a gloomy father and daughter is overflowing with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrogradeness of the people depicted.
In fact, the artist did not intend to depict any horrors: during a trip to Iowa, he noticed a small house in the Gothic style and decided to depict those people who, in his opinion, would be ideally suited as inhabitants. Grant's sister and his dentist are immortalized in the form of characters that the people of Iowa were so offended by.
Revenge of Salvador Dali
The painting "Figure at the Window" was painted in 1925, when Dali was 21 years old. Then Gala had not yet entered the life of the artist, and his sister Ana Maria was his muse. The relationship between brother and sister deteriorated when he wrote on one of the paintings "sometimes I spit on a portrait of my own mother, and it gives me pleasure." Ana Maria could not forgive such shocking.
In her 1949 book Salvador Dali Through the Eyes of a Sister, she writes about her brother without any praise. The book infuriated El Salvador. For another ten years after that, he angrily remembered her at every opportunity. And so, in 1954, the picture "A young virgin indulging in Sodomy sin with the help of the horns of her own chastity" appears. The pose of the woman, her curls, the landscape outside the window and the color scheme of the painting clearly echo the Figure at the Window. There is a version that this is how Dali took revenge on his sister for her book.
Two-faced Danae
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Danae, 1636-1647.
Many secrets of one of the most famous paintings by Rembrandt were revealed only in the 60s of the twentieth century, when the canvas was illuminated with X-rays. For example, the shooting showed that in the early version, the face of the princess, who entered into a love affair with Zeus, looked like the face of Saskia, the wife of the painter, who died in 1642. In the final version of the painting, it began to resemble the face of Gertier Dirks, Rembrandt's mistress, with whom the artist lived after the death of his wife.
Van Gogh's yellow bedroom
Vincent van Gogh, "Bedroom in Arles", 1888 - 1889.
In May 1888, Van Gogh acquired a small workshop in Arles, in the south of France, where he fled from the Parisian artists and critics who did not understand him. In one of the four rooms, Vincent sets up a bedroom. In October, everything is ready, and he decides to paint Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles. For the artist, the color, the comfort of the room was very important: everything had to suggest thoughts of relaxation. At the same time, the picture is sustained in disturbing yellow tones.
Researchers of Van Gogh's creativity explain this by the fact that the artist took foxglove, a remedy for epilepsy, which causes serious changes in the patient's perception of color: the entire surrounding reality is painted in green-yellow tones.
Toothless perfection
Leonardo da Vinci, "Portrait of Mrs. Lisa del Giocondo", 1503 - 1519.
The generally accepted opinion is that Mona Lisa is perfection and her smile is beautiful in its mysteriousness. However, the American art critic (and part-time dentist) Joseph Borkowski believes that, judging by the expression on her face, the heroine has lost a lot of teeth. While examining enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski also found scars around her mouth. “She smiles so much precisely because of what happened to her,” the expert believes. “Her facial expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth.”
Major on face control
Pavel Fedotov, Major's Matchmaking, 1848.
The public, who first saw the painting "Major's Matchmaking", laughed heartily: the artist Fedotov filled it with ironic details that were understandable to viewers of that time. For example, the major is clearly not familiar with the rules of noble etiquette: he appeared without the proper bouquets for the bride and her mother. And the bride herself was discharged by her merchant parents into an evening ball gown, although it was daytime (all the lamps in the room were extinguished). The girl obviously tried on a low-cut dress for the first time, is embarrassed and tries to run away to her room.
Why Freedom is naked
Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix, Liberty at the Barricades, 1830.
According to the art historian Etienne Julie, Delacroix painted the face of a woman from the famous Parisian revolutionary - the laundress Anna-Charlotte, who went to the barricades after the death of her brother at the hands of royal soldiers and killed nine guardsmen. The artist depicted her bare-chested. According to his plan, this is a symbol of fearlessness and selflessness, as well as the triumph of democracy: naked breasts show that Svoboda, like a commoner, does not wear a corset.
non-square square
Kazimir Malevich, Black Suprematist Square, 1915.
In fact, the "Black Square" is not at all black and not at all square: none of the sides of the quadrangle is parallel to any of its other sides, and none of the sides of the square frame that frames the picture. And the dark color is the result of mixing various colors, among which there was no black. It is believed that this was not the negligence of the author, but a principled position, the desire to create a dynamic, mobile form.
Specialists of the Tretyakov Gallery have discovered the author's inscription on a famous painting by Malevich. The inscription reads: "Battle of the Negroes in a dark cave." This phrase refers to the name of the playful painting by the French journalist, writer and artist Alphonse Allais “Battle of the Negroes in a Dark Cave in the Dead of Night”, which was an absolutely black rectangle.
Melodrama of the Austrian Mona Lisa
Gustav Klimt, "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", 1907.
One of Klimt's most significant paintings depicts the wife of the Austrian sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. All Vienna discussed the stormy romance between Adele and the famous artist. The wounded husband wanted to take revenge on his lovers, but chose a very unusual way: he decided to order a portrait of Adele from Klimt and force him to make hundreds of sketches until the artist starts to turn away from her.
Bloch-Bauer wanted the work to last several years, and the model could see how Klimt's feelings fade away. He made a generous offer to the artist, which he could not refuse, and everything turned out according to the scenario of the deceived husband: the work was completed in 4 years, the lovers had long cooled off towards each other. Adele Bloch-Bauer never found out that her husband was aware of her relationship with Klimt.
The painting that brought Gauguin back to life
Paul Gauguin, "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?", 1897-1898.
Gauguin's most famous canvas has one feature: it is "read" not from left to right, but from right to left, like Kabbalistic texts that the artist was interested in. It is in this order that the allegory of the spiritual and physical life of a person unfolds: from the birth of the soul (a sleeping child in the lower right corner) to the inevitability of the hour of death (a bird with a lizard in its claws in the lower left corner).
The painting was painted by Gauguin in Tahiti, where the artist fled from civilization several times. But this time life on the island did not work out: total poverty led him to depression. Having finished the canvas, which was to become his spiritual testament, Gauguin took a box of arsenic and went to the mountains to die. However, he did not calculate the dose, and the suicide failed. The next morning, he staggered to his hut and fell asleep, and when he woke up, he felt a forgotten thirst for life. And in 1898, his affairs went uphill, and a brighter period began in his work.
112 proverbs in one picture
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, "Netherlands Proverbs", 1559
Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted a land inhabited by literal images of the Dutch proverbs of those days. There are approximately 112 recognizable idioms in the painted picture. Some of them are still used today, such as "swim against the current", "bang your head against the wall", "armed to the teeth" and "big fish eats small ones".
Other proverbs reflect human stupidity.
Subjectivity of art
Paul Gauguin, Breton village under the snow, 1894
Gauguin's painting "Breton Village in the Snow" was sold after the death of the author for only seven francs and, moreover, under the name "Niagara Falls". The auctioneer accidentally hung the painting upside down after seeing a waterfall in it.
hidden picture
Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901
In 2008, infrared showed that another image was hidden under the "Blue Room" - a portrait of a man dressed in a suit with a butterfly and resting his head on his hand. “As soon as Picasso had a new idea, he took up the brush and embodied it. But he did not have the opportunity to buy a new canvas every time the muse visited him, ”art historian Patricia Favero explains the possible reason for this.
Inaccessible Moroccan women
Zinaida Serebryakova, Naked, 1928
One day, Zinaida Serebryakova received a tempting offer - to go on a creative journey to portray the naked figures of oriental maidens. But it turned out that it was simply impossible to find models in those places. An interpreter for Zinaida came to the rescue - he brought his sisters and his bride to her. No one before and after that was able to capture the closed oriental women naked.
Spontaneous insight
Valentin Serov, "Portrait of Nicholas II in a jacket", 1900
For a long time Serov could not paint a portrait of the king. When the artist completely gave up, he apologized to Nikolai. Nikolai was a little upset, sat down at the table, stretching out his hands in front of him ... And then it dawned on the artist - here he is! A simple military man in an officer's jacket with clear and sad eyes. This portrait is considered the best depiction of the last emperor.
Again deuce
© Fedor Reshetnikov
The famous painting "Again deuce" is just the second part of the artistic trilogy.
The first part is "Arrived for the holidays." Obviously a well-to-do family, winter holidays, a joyful excellent student.
The second part is "Again the deuce." A poor family from the outskirts of the working class, the height of the school year, a dull stunner who again grabbed a deuce. In the upper left corner you can see the picture "Arrived for the holidays."
The third part is "Re-examination". Rural house, summer, everyone is walking, one malicious ignoramus who failed the annual exam is forced to sit within four walls and cram. In the upper left corner you can see the picture "Again deuce".
How masterpieces are born
Joseph Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844
In 1842, Mrs. Simon traveled by train in England. Suddenly, a heavy downpour began. The elderly gentleman sitting across from her got up, opened the window, stuck his head out, and stared like that for about ten minutes. Unable to contain her curiosity, the woman also opened the window and looked ahead. A year later, she discovered the painting “Rain, Steam and Speed” at an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and was able to recognize in it the very episode on the train.
Anatomy lesson from Michelangelo
Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, 1511
A couple of American neuroanatomy experts believe that Michelangelo actually left some anatomical illustrations in one of his most famous works. They believe that a huge brain is depicted on the right side of the picture. Surprisingly, even complex components such as the cerebellum, optic nerves, and pituitary gland can be found. And the catchy green ribbon perfectly matches the location of the vertebral artery.
The Last Supper by Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888
Researcher Jared Baxter believes that Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night contains a dedication to Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. In the center of the picture is a waiter with long hair and in a white tunic, reminiscent of the clothes of Christ, and around him exactly 12 cafe visitors. Baxter also draws attention to the cross, located directly behind the back of the waiter in white.
Dali's image of memory
Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
It is no secret that the thoughts that visited Dali during the creation of his masterpieces were always in the form of very realistic images, which the artist then transferred to the canvas. So, according to the author himself, the painting "The Persistence of Memory" was painted as a result of associations that arose at the sight of processed cheese.
What is Munch shouting about
Edvard Munch, "The Scream", 1893.
Munch spoke about the idea of one of the most mysterious paintings in world painting: "I was walking along the path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red, I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - I looked at blood and flames over the bluish-black fjord and the city - my friends went on, and I stood, trembling with excitement, feeling the endless cry piercing nature. But what kind of sunset could scare the artist so?
There is a version that the idea of "Scream" was born by Munch in 1883, when there were several strongest eruptions of the Krakatoa volcano - so powerful that they changed the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere by one degree. A copious amount of dust and ash spread across the globe, reaching even as far as Norway. For several evenings in a row, the sunsets looked as if the apocalypse was about to come - one of them became a source of inspiration for the artist.
Writer among the people
Alexander Ivanov, "The Appearance of Christ to the People", 1837-1857.
Dozens of sitters posed for Alexander Ivanov for his main picture. One of them is known no less than the artist himself. In the background, among travelers and Roman horsemen who have not yet heard the sermon of John the Baptist, one can notice a character in a brown tunic. His Ivanov wrote with Nikolai Gogol. The writer closely communicated with the artist in Italy, in particular on religious issues, and gave him advice in the process of painting. Gogol believed that Ivanov "had long since died for the whole world, except for his work."
Michelangelo's gout
Raphael Santi, The School of Athens, 1511.
Creating the famous fresco "The School of Athens", Raphael immortalized his friends and acquaintances in the images of ancient Greek philosophers. One of them was Michelangelo Buonarroti "in the role" of Heraclitus. For several centuries, the fresco kept the secrets of Michelangelo's personal life, and modern researchers have suggested that the artist's strangely angular knee indicates that he has a joint disease.
This is quite likely, given the peculiarities of the lifestyle and working conditions of Renaissance artists and Michelangelo's chronic workaholism.
Mirror of the Arnolfinis
Jan van Eyck, "Portrait of the Arnolfinis", 1434
In the mirror behind the Arnolfinis, you can see the reflection of two more people in the room. Most likely, these are witnesses present at the conclusion of the contract. One of them is van Eyck, as evidenced by the Latin inscription placed, contrary to tradition, above the mirror in the center of the composition: "Jan van Eyck was here." This is how the contracts were usually sealed.
How a flaw turned into a talent
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Self-portrait at the age of 63, 1669.
The researcher Margaret Livingston studied all Rembrandt's self-portraits and found that the artist suffered from strabismus: in the images his eyes look in different directions, which is not observed in the portraits of other people by the master. The disease led to the fact that the artist could better perceive reality in two dimensions than people with normal vision. This phenomenon is called "stereo blindness" - the inability to see the world in 3D. But since the painter has to work with a two-dimensional image, it was precisely this shortcoming of Rembrandt that could be one of the explanations for his phenomenal talent.
Sinless Venus
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1482-1486.
Before the advent of The Birth of Venus, the image of a naked female body in painting symbolized only the idea of original sin. Sandro Botticelli was the first European painter not to find anything sinful in him. Moreover, art historians are sure that the pagan goddess of love symbolizes the Christian image on the fresco: her appearance is an allegory of the rebirth of the soul that has undergone the rite of baptism.
Lute player or lute player?
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Lute Player, 1596.
For a long time, the painting was exhibited in the Hermitage under the title "Lute Player". Only at the beginning of the 20th century, art historians agreed that the canvas still depicts a young man (probably, Caravaggio was posed by his friend artist Mario Minniti): on the notes in front of the musician, a recording of the bass part of the madrigal by Jacob Arcadelt “You know that I love you” is visible . A woman could hardly make such a choice - it's just hard for the throat. In addition, the lute, like the violin at the very edge of the picture, was considered a male instrument in the era of Caravaggio.
There are many masterpieces of fine art known throughout the world. But not everyone knows that some of them keep secrets that were discovered after the death of the creators of the works. Although there are such secrets that were learned during the lifetime of artists, which makes the paintings even more mysterious and attractive.
1. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1500-1510.
2. Since the appearance of this masterpiece by the Dutch artist, disputes have flared up more than once about the meanings hidden in it. Of particular interest has always been the sinner depicted on the right wing of the triptych, who has notes imprinted on his buttocks. One of the students of Oklahoma Christian University named Amelia Hamrick, decided to shift the notation of the 16th century to a modern twist, and the “500-year-old song from hell from hell” that appeared on the Internet became a real sensation.
3. "Mona Lisa"
Few people know that there are two versions of the well-known picture. One of them is called "Monna Vanna", and its author is a student and sitter of Leonardo da Vinci, a little-known artist Salai. Art critics are sure that it was this young artist who was the model for the great Leonardo when painting such paintings as John the Baptist and Bacchus. Some even suspect that it was Salai who posed for the painting "Mona Lisa", dressed in a woman's dress.
4. "Old Rybak"
5. This seemingly unremarkable painting was painted by the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Chontvari in 1902. That's just the subtext inherent in the picture, was revealed only after the death of the author. If you put a mirror in the middle of the picture, then on the one hand you can see God, and on the other - the Devil. So the artist tried to reflect the dual nature of each of us.
6. "The Last Supper"
When writing his picture, Leonardo da Vinci paid special attention to the figures of Christ and Judas. One of the young singers was chosen as the sitter for the image of Christ, but the artist spent three whole years searching for a sitter for Judas. Once on the street, Leonardo stumbled upon a drunkard who liked him so much that he decided to write Judas from him. What was the surprise of the artist when the drunkard who came to his senses said that he had already posed for the master several years ago and it was from him that Leonardo painted Christ.
7. "American Gothic"
Many consider Grant Wood's work to be strange and depressing, although there is absolutely no subtext in it. The artist made this painting during a trip to Iowa when he saw a small house in the Gothic style. Grant's sister and his dentist posed as characters in front of the house.
8. Night Watch
This painting by Rembrandt "The performance of the rifle company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburg" was discovered by art historians only in the 19th century. This work entered the treasury of world art under the name "Night Watch", which she received due to the dark background against which the figures act. In 1947, the painting was restored, and it was then that a layer of soot was discovered that covered it. Having cleared the original, it was revealed that the artist meant a daytime scene, judging by the position of the shadow from the left hand of the center figure at about 14 hours.
9. "Boat"
In 1961, Henri Matisse's The Boat hung upside down in the New York Museum of Modern Art for 47 days. The painting shows 10 purple lines and two blue sails on a white background. When it was discovered that the second sail was just a reflection of the first on the surface of the water, it became clear that the picture was hung incorrectly. The top of the picture should be a large sail.
10. "Self-portrait with a pipe"
Although many believe that Van Gogh cut off his own ear, art historians are sure that the artist injured his ear in a fight with the artist Paul Gauguin. Considering that the self-portrait reflects a distorted reality due to the fact that it was painted using a mirror, in fact, the artist suffered from his left ear.
11. "Breakfast on the grass." The two French artists Edouard Manet and Claude Monet are often confused. This is not surprising, because even the name of Manet's painting "Breakfast on the Grass" Monet borrowed and wrote his "Breakfast on the Grass".
12. Claude Monet, Breakfast on the Grass.
13. "Morning in a pine forest"
As it turned out, not only Shishkin worked on this well-known painting. Since the artist, who specialized in painting landscapes, did not get bears, he turned to the animal painter Konstantin Savitsky for help.
An American student deciphered the music notation depicted on the buttocks of a sinner from a painting by Bosch. The resulting melody has become one of the Internet sensations of recent times.
In almost every significant work of art there is a mystery, a double bottom or a secret story that you want to uncover. Today we will share a few of them.
Music on the buttocks
In 1902, the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Chontvari painted the painting "Old Fisherman". It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the picture, but Tivadar laid a subtext in it, which was never disclosed during the life of the artist.
Few people thought of putting a mirror in the middle of the picture. In each person there can be both God (the right shoulder of the Old Man is duplicated) and the Devil (the left shoulder of the old man is duplicated).
Twins at the Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498.
When Leonardo da Vinci wrote The Last Supper, he attached particular importance to two figures: Christ and Judas. He was looking for sitters for them for a very long time. Finally, he managed to find a model for the image of Christ among the young singers. Leonardo failed to find a sitter for Judas for three years. But one day he came across a drunkard lying in the gutter on the street. He was a young man who had been aged by heavy drinking. Leonardo invited him to a tavern, where he immediately began to write Judas from him. When the drunkard came to his senses, he told the artist that he had already posed for him once. It was a few years ago, when he sang in the church choir, Leonardo wrote Christ from him.
Innocent story "Gothic"
Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930.
Grant Wood's work is considered one of the strangest and most depressing in the history of American painting. The picture with a gloomy father and daughter is overflowing with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrogradeness of the people depicted. In fact, the artist did not intend to depict any horrors: during a trip to Iowa, he noticed a small house in the Gothic style and decided to depict those people who, in his opinion, would be ideally suited as inhabitants. Grant's sister and his dentist are immortalized in the form of characters that the people of Iowa were so offended by.
"Night Watch" or "Day Watch"?
Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642.
One of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, “The Performance of the Rifle Company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenbürg,” hung in different halls for about two hundred years and was discovered by art historians only in the 19th century. Since the figures seemed to stand out against a dark background, it was called the Night Watch, and under this name it entered the treasury of world art. And only during the restoration, carried out in 1947, it turned out that in the hall the picture had managed to become covered with a layer of soot, which distorted its color. After clearing the original painting, it was finally revealed that the scene presented by Rembrandt actually takes place during the day. The position of the shadow from the left hand of Captain Kok shows that the duration of the action is no more than 14 hours.
capsized boat
Henri Matisse, The Boat, 1937.
In the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1961, Henri Matisse's painting "The Boat" was exhibited. Only after 47 days did someone notice that the painting was hanging upside down. The canvas depicts 10 purple lines and two blue sails on a white background. The artist painted two sails for a reason, the second sail is a reflection of the first one on the surface of the water. In order not to be mistaken in how the picture should hang, you need to pay attention to the details. The larger sail should be at the top of the painting, and the peak of the sail of the painting should be directed to the upper right corner.
Deception in a self-portrait
Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with a Pipe, 1889.
There are legends that Van Gogh allegedly cut off his own ear. Now the most reliable version is that van Gogh's ear was damaged in a small scuffle with the participation of another artist, Paul Gauguin. The self-portrait is interesting because it reflects reality in a distorted form: the artist is depicted with a bandaged right ear, because he used a mirror when working. In fact, the left ear was damaged.
Two "Breakfasts on the Grass"
Édouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863.
Claude Monet, Breakfast on the Grass, 1865.
Artists Edouard Manet and Claude Monet are sometimes confused - after all, they were both French, lived at the same time and worked in the style of impressionism. Even the name of one of Manet's most famous paintings, "Breakfast on the Grass", Monet borrowed and wrote his "Breakfast on the Grass".
alien bears
Ivan Shishkin, "Morning in the Pine Forest", 1889.
The famous painting belongs not only to the brush of Shishkin. Many artists who were friends with each other often resorted to "the help of a friend", and Ivan Ivanovich, who had been painting landscapes all his life, was afraid that touching bears would not turn out the way he needed. Therefore, Shishkin turned to a familiar animal painter Konstantin Savitsky.
Savitsky painted perhaps the best bears in the history of Russian painting, and Tretyakov ordered his name to be washed off the canvas, since everything in the picture “beginning from the idea and ending with the execution, everything speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method peculiar to Shishkin.”
Mystical mysteries of paintings
Any picture painted by a person carries the information that the artist put into it, the one who painted it. But he didn’t just draw, although this is also a very important moment, but with what thoughts, he painted it. What is the point, the information he put into it.
During the time of Pushkin, the portrait of Maria Lopukhina was one of the main "horror stories". The girl lived a short and unhappy life, and after painting the portrait she died of consumption. Her father Ivan Lopukhin was a famous mystic and master of the Masonic Lodge. That is why rumors spread that he managed to lure the spirit of his dead daughter into this portrait. And that if young girls look at the picture, they will soon die. According to the version of salon gossips, the portrait of Mary killed at least ten noblewomen of marriageable age ...
The philanthropist Tretyakov put an end to the rumors, who in 1880 bought the portrait for his gallery. There was no significant mortality among the visitors. The conversations subsided. But the sediment remained!
"Hands Resist Him"
This painting was painted by Bill Stoneham. The scandal began after one of the exhibitions. Mentally unbalanced people viewing this picture became ill, they lost consciousness, began to cry, etc. It all started in 1972, when the painting was drawn by Bill Stoneham from an old photograph of him at the age of five found in the Chicago house where he lived at the time (first photo).
The painting was first shown to the owner and art critic of the Los Angeles Times, who later died. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. The painting was then purchased by actor John Marley (died 1984). Then the most interesting begins. The picture was found in a landfill among a pile of garbage. The family that found her brought her home and already on the first night a little four-year-old daughter ran into her parents' bedroom screaming that the children in the picture were fighting. The next night that the children in the picture were outside the door. The next night, the head of the family set the video camera to turn on by movement in the room where the picture hung. The camcorder worked several times.
The painting was put up for auction on eBay. Soon, alarming letters began to come to the mail addresses of eBay administrators with complaints of deterioration in health, loss of consciousness, and even heart attacks. There was a warning on eBay (as well as in this post), but people are known to be curious and many ignored the warning.
The painting was sold for 1025 USD, the starting price was 199 USD. The page with the picture was visited over 30,000 times, but mostly just for fun. It was bought by Kim Smith, who lived in a small town near Chicago. He was just looking for something for his newly renovated art gallery on the Internet. When he came across "Hands Resist Him" he thought at first that it was painted in the forties and would be perfect for him as an exhibit.
"Lilies"
Impressionist Claude Monet painted a landscape with water lilies. When the artist and his friends were celebrating the completion of the painting, a small fire broke out in the studio. The flame was quickly filled with wine and did not attach any importance to this. And in vain ...
Only a month the picture hung in a cabaret in Montmartre. And then one night the place burned to the ground. But the "Lilies" managed to save.
The painting was bought by the Parisian philanthropist Oscar Schmitz. A year later, his house burned down. The fire started from the office, where the ill-fated canvas hung. It miraculously survived.
Another victim of Monet's landscape was the New York Museum of Modern Art. The Water Lilies were brought here in 1958. Four months later, here, too, it flared up not like a child. And the damned picture was very charred. Now NASA specialists are ready to restore it using space technology.
"Scream" Artist Edvard Munch
A masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was stolen in broad daylight from a museum in Oslo. A very tasty morsel: there is a picture $70 million! But something tells me that it is unlikely that the villains will have a chance to squander this money. After all, "Scream" takes revenge on those who offend him.
The museum tells how one worker accidentally dropped the painting. From that day on, he began to have a terrible headache. The pain got worse, and the guy committed suicide. And the museum visitor just touched the "Scream" with his finger. And what do you think? In the evening, a fire started in his house, and the man was burned alive.
"Adoration of the Magi"
The Dutch artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder painted The Adoration of the Magi for two years. He "copied" the Virgin Mary from his cousin. She was a barren woman, for which she received constant cuffs from her husband. It was she who, as simple medieval Dutch gossiped, "infected" the picture. Four times "Magi" were bought by private collectors. And each time the same story was repeated: in a family for 10-12 years no children were born ...
Finally, in 1637, the painting was bought by the architect Jacob van Campen. By that time, he already had three children, so the curse did not really scare him.
The artist and author of the painting “The Crying Boy”, the father of the child depicted on it, mocked his son by lighting matches in front of the baby’s face. The fact is that the boy was consumed by fire until death. And the man in this way tried to achieve brightness, vitality and naturalness of the canvas. The boy was crying - the artist was drawing. One day the kid shouted at his father: "You yourself burn!" A month later, the baby died of pneumonia. And a couple of weeks later, the charred body of the artist was found in his own house next to a painting of a crying boy that survived the fire.
Probably the most famous bad picture of the Internet space with the following story: A certain schoolgirl (often mentioned Japanese) before opening her veins (jumping out of the window, eating pills, hanging herself, drowning herself in the bathroom) painted this picture. If you look at her for 5 minutes in a row, the girl will change (eyes will turn red, hair will turn black, fangs will appear).
In fact, it is clear that the picture is clearly not drawn by hand, as many like to claim. Although no one gives clear answers how this picture appeared.
Svetlana Taurus
Now it hangs modestly without a frame in one of the shops in Vinnitsa. "Rain Woman" is the most expensive of all works: it costs $500. According to the sellers, the painting has already been bought three times, and then returned. Clients explain that they are dreaming about her. And someone even says that he knows this lady, but does not remember where. And everyone who has ever looked into her white eyes will forever remember the feeling of a rainy day, silence, anxiety and fear.
Where did the unusual picture come from, said its author, Vinnitsa artist Svetlana Telets. “In 1996, I graduated from the Odessa Art University. Grekova, - Svetlana recalls. - And six months before the birth of "Women" it always seemed to me that someone was constantly watching me. I drove away such thoughts from myself, and then one day, by the way, not at all rainy, I sat in front of a blank canvas and thought what to draw. And suddenly she clearly saw the contours of a woman, her face, colors, shades. In an instant, I noticed all the details of the image. I wrote the main thing quickly - I managed it in five hours. It felt like someone was holding my hand. And then I painted for another month.”
Arriving in Vinnitsa, Svetlana exhibited the painting in the local art salon. Art connoisseurs approached her every now and then and shared the same thoughts that she herself had during her work.
“It was interesting to observe,” says the artist, “how subtly a thing can materialize a thought and inspire it in other people.”
A few years ago, the first customer appeared. A lonely businesswoman walked around the halls for a long time, looking closely. Having bought "Woman", she hung it in her bedroom.
Two weeks later, a night call rang out in Svetlana's apartment: “Please pick her up. I can not sleep. It seems that there is someone in the apartment besides me. I even took it off the wall, hid it behind the closet, but I can’t do it all early. ”
Then a second buyer appeared. Then a young man bought the painting. And he didn't last long either. He brought it to the artist himself. And he didn't even take the money back.
"Venus with a Mirror" Velasquez
Velazquez's painting "Venus with a Mirror" also enjoyed deservedly notoriety. Everyone who bought it either went bankrupt or died a violent death. Even museums did not really want to include its main composition, and the picture constantly changed its "registration". The case ended with the fact that one day a crazy visitor attacked the canvas and cut it with a knife.
Van Gogh and Alice's rabbit hole
Eschatology for the illiterate
The eras of the early and classical Middle Ages in Europe (VI-XIV centuries) are the time of the dominance of monastic cartography. The monastic map, the so-called mappa mundi (“map of the world” in Latin), is a mixture of time and space, myths and realities of the Oikoumene known at that time. About 1100 monastery maps have survived to this day, about 600 of them were made before the 14th century.
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Art is not only a source of inspiration, but also a great mystery. After all, often artists add interesting details to their paintings or leave messages that cannot be seen at first sight.
website collected masterpieces of painting with unexpected secrets. At the end of the article, a bonus awaits you: one of the strangest assumptions about the Mona Lisa.
10. Wrong ear
Vincent van Gogh's "Self-Portrait with a Cut-Off Ear and Pipe" shows that the artist's right ear was injured. Actually went to the left ear. The fact is that the post-impressionist used a mirror to paint.
9. A painting within a painting
If you look closely at the "Old Guitarist" Pablo Picasso, you can see the silhouette of a woman. Using infrared and X-ray images, scientists at the Art Institute of Chicago have discovered several more figures that are hidden under the painting. Most likely, the artist did not have enough money to buy new canvases and he was forced to paint over the old ones.
8. "Night watch" was a day
During the restoration of Rembrandt's painting "The performance of the rifle company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburg", which is better known as "Night Watch", in 1947 a thick layer of soot was discovered on it. After clearing, it turned out that the events depicted on the canvas take place during the day, and not at night.
7. Anatomical code of the Sistine Chapel
6. Symbol of strength
In the fresco "David and Goliath" Michelangelo encoded the Hebrew letter "gimel", which in the mystical tradition of Kabbalah means strength.
5. Rembrandt's strabismus
Margaret Livingston and Beville Conway studied Rembrandt's self-portraits and proved that the artist suffered from strabismus. Due to illness, the painter perceived the world differently than other people, and saw reality not in 3D, but in 2D. However, it is possible that thanks to stereo-blindness, Rembrandt created his immortal masterpieces.
4. Revenge on lovers
One of Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings depicts Adele Bloch-Bauer. The magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer commissioned the portrait of his wife. He learned about the affair between Adele and Klimt and believed that after hundreds of sketches, the painter will hate his mistress. Routine work really made it so that the feelings of the model and the artist cooled down.
3. Doomsday prediction
Italian researcher Sabrina Sforza Galizia has proposed an unusual interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. She is sure that in his painting the artist left a prediction of the end of the world, which will happen on March 21, 4006. To understand this the researcher solved the mathematical and astrological cipher"The Last Supper".
2. The world in yellow
