For many of us, art history is the gateway to napping. As beautiful and uplifting as art can be, the history part is one of those things that’s either fascinating or too boring for words.
But when there’s a mystery involved with one of the most famous works of art ever applied to canvas, well, now you’ve got something.
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Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ is one of the most instantly recognizable works of art in the world.
And it’s no coincidence that it has also been stolen twice — first in 1994, and then, in a brazen robbery by armed gunmen in 2004, another version of the painting was nabbed.
Munch actually painted several different versions of ‘The Scream,’ but the earliest made its debut back in 1893. Even then, critics and art lovers alike were obsessed with Munch’s image that seemed to encapsulate human anxiety and unease.
While the haunted face in ‘The Scream’ rightfully gets all the press, there’s more to the painting than that.
Indeed, as early as 1904, keen-eyed observers noted that there was also a message written on the painting, very faintly, in pencil.
“Could only have been painted by a madman!” the inscription reads.
The question that experts have long debated is, who wrote it there?
As scholars have noted, the painting didn’t receive a thoroughly warm welcome at its debut.
Which is why, early after the inscription was discovered, a Danish art critic chalked it up to a dissatisfied, and decidedly rude, member of the public, according to The National Museum of Norway .
Perhaps for that reason, while the inscription has been debated, it hasn’t been thoroughly investigated. “You have to get quite close to see the inscription. We seldom find such inscriptions on paintings, particularly not on one of the world’s most famous ones,” Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum, said in a press release. “Given that it’s such an important work in the history of international art, the inscription has received remarkably little attention.”
One thing experts have known is that the pencil writing was added *after* the work was completed.
“Through a microscope, you can see that the pencil lines are physically on top of the paint and have been applied after the painting was finished,” Thierry Ford, the paintings conservator at the National Museum of Norway, explained.
But, while that much has been easy to see, little else is. Pencil-on-paint is not easy to interpret, Ford said, so experts at the museum put some technology to work to better read it.
“We chose to photograph it with an infrared camera to get a clearer picture of the inscription,” Ford said. “In an infrared photo, the carbon from the pencil stands out more clearly and makes handwriting analysis easier. And you don’t have to impact the painting itself.”
Under infrared, the handwriting wasn’t just legible; it stood out.
With that new clarity, the museum’s experts could actually compare the handwriting to samples they had on hand from Munch’s diaries and letters. The writing was indisputably in Munch’s own hand, likely written around 1895 following questions about the soundness of his mind.
“The inscription can be read as an ironic comment, but at the same time as an expression of the artist’s vulnerability,” Guleng explained, noting the effect that criticism of Munch’s art that focused on his mental state had on the artist. “Writing on the finished painting shows that creating for Munch was a continuous process.”
The version of ‘The Scream’ featuring the inscription is due to go on display at Norway’s new National Museum when it opens in 2022.
