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Hidden message inside Munch's "The Scream" painting revealed


Wed 24 Feb 2021 | 12:59 AM
Rana Atef

Experts have finally managed in revealing a mysterious message in the top left-hand corner of one of the world's famous paintings, "The Scream" which was painted by Edvard Munch.

This discovery came after long years of debate between artists and art historians around the text written inside "The Scream."

Consisted of one sentence, "Could only have been painted by a madman!" was written by Munch himself according to experts who studied the painting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahq4M4dmoBM

The new scans showed that the artist wrote the sentence in Pencil on the painting after completing it, according to the National Museum of Norway.

The museum analyzed the handwriting and compared it to Munch's diaries and letters from the time.

Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum highlighted: "The writing is without a doubt Munch's own," adding: "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."

Message hidden inside

Thierry Ford, a paintings conservator at the National Museum, said: "The writing has always been visible to the naked eye, but it's been very difficult to interpret," continuing: "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."

In 1895, Munch received harsh criticism after revealing the painting, on the other hand, a medical student called Johan Scharffenberg suspected the artist's mental status during a debate in the presence of Munch.

The director of the Norwegian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design Henrik Grosch at that time described: "Munch a serious man with a normal brain."