By Madeleine Muzdakis on February 25, 2021
Infrared photography used on Edvard Munch s “The Scream” at the National Museum of Norway. (Photo: Annar Bjorgli/The National Museum)
Etched into the paint of one of the most famous paintings in the world, a haunting eight-word sentence has been a mystery to art historians for over a century. In 1904, a Danish art critic peering at Edvard Munch‘s
The Scream noticed graffiti along the rolling clouds of the blood-red sunset. The sentence reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman.” The mysterious statement clearly added sometime after the painting s debut in 1893 was long thought to be added either by a disgruntled onlooker or perhaps the artist himself. The century-old debate has finally been settled by modern technology. Using infrared photography to compare handwriting to Munch s letters and journals, experts at the National Museum of N
Edvard Munch taking criticism badly is all of us
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Norway Museum: Munch Wrote Madman Sentence on The Scream – Courthouse News Service
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Prepping for a 2022 opening, Norway’s National Museum has finally put to rest a mystery that dates back to 1904. Inscribed on the top left-hand corner of the canvas in Edvard Munch‘s
The Scream is the sentence, “Can only have been painted by a madman.”
For decades, art experts could not confirm the origins of the line, but now thanks to infrared technology, the writing on the original
The Scream from 1893 has been confirmed as Munch’s. The line on the painting was compared with handwriting from that artist’s diaries and letters to which the styles matched up. “The writing is without a doubt Munch’s own. The handwriting itself, as well as events that happened in 1895, when Munch showed the painting in Norway for the first time, all point in the same direction,” said Mai Britt Guleng, the museum’s curator.
Edvard Munch's The Scream, one of the most well-known artworks in the world, includes a long-held mystery in a faint written message in the top-left corner of the painting. The tiny inscription "Can only have been painted by a madman," once considered a vandal's scrawl, has been determined to be by the artist's own hand. New research and infrared technology conducted by the National Museum of Norway has concluded that Munch wrote the phrase himself. The rarely-exhibited work, .