6 Secrets hidden in great masterpieces of painting

Famous artists used to leave secret messages and attribute hidden meanings to their works, some of which remain a mystery to us. For example, do you remember the famous work The Pearl Girl🇧🇷 It turned out that her jewelry has nothing to do with a pearl or an earring. Perhaps you have heard the story of two canvases by Salvador Dalí that are closely linked to his sister?

O awesome.club invites you to a small immersion in the world of art and wants to share some curious stories that are behind the most famous paintings in the world.

THE ninth wave is one of the most ambitious and impressive works by the famous Russian painter. The raging sea, the sinking of the ship and the crew trying to survive the storm, it seems that the sea is about to overtake the frame throwing its waters at the observer.

But very few people know that, in addition to people, there is something else hidden in the picture. If you look closely, you can see a cow in the lower right corner.🇧🇷 According to the audio guide of the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, where the canvas is on display, “the cow means that they are close to the coast and people have the opportunity to be saved”. This is the twist of the plot! On the other hand, maybe the cow was on the ship as cargo. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to know for sure what the artist wanted to convey.

The work of the Dutchman Pieter Bruegel, “the Elder”, hides many mysteries, and some of them still remain unsolved. The painting has two opposing interpretations. The first is that the death of a person is not capable of stopping the course of life, even that of a hero as insolent as Icarus. So, before us, in the foreground, a peasant appears, and Icarus himself is quite difficult to find: his legs stick out of the water in the lower right corner of the picture. Nobody noticed his fall, life is hard, but it goes on. The second interpretation holds that the death of Icarus as a hero striving for new discoveries and conquests is the defeat of all those who are attracted by science and perfection.

Art historians have managed to discover that, underneath the canvas, there is a drawing that has nothing to do with the artist’s technique🇧🇷 So this image could be a copy, while the original has not survived. Other experts believe that the image is original and is painted by Bruegel on a wooden base and then transferred to canvas. In our days, the author of the painting can no longer be identified, but you can admire the unusual canvas in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

The painting represents the artist’s lover, Madeleine Knobloch. The portrait genre was completely unusual for Georges Seurat, but, apparently, the experiment was encouraged by love. Until the artist’s death, no one knew that this woman was his beloved, as he was very secretive and usually did not share his personal life, even with his relatives.

Initially, the French artist painted his self-portrait in the window, looking passionately at the girl., but, on the advice of one of his friends, he replaced it with a vase of flowers. What a shame!

On the left is a photograph of the canvas in the restoration process, in which you can see the original top layer of paint. On the right, the screen after restoration.

There is a very interesting story related to the painting. The Woman at the Window by an unknown Italian artist (the picture is kept at the National Gallery, London). In 1978, it was decided to send the image for restoration, a routine procedure for works of art. But in the course of work, experts found that under the outer layer there was a different image: it was no longer a brunette, but a blonde, also with different eyes and clothes.

The image could have been corrected to adapt to 19th century customs. The very exuberant bust, the look to the side and some other details could indicate that the woman in the portrait
she was a courtesan.

One of the best works of the Renaissance, the famous mural by the Italian Rafael Sanzio, The School of Athens, hides some surprises. The artist incorporated the images of great thinkers and scientists, but in some of them he decided to immortalize his famous friends. Thus, the appearance of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was copied by Raphael from Michelangelo Buonarroti (1), the philosopher Plato has a face similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci (2), and the features of Raphael himself are easily noticeable in the image of Apelles, a ancient Greek painter.

A recent study of Dutch Jan Vermeer’s most famous painting has revealed that the pearl in the painting is too big to be authentic. Maybe it’s an artificial pearl made of Venetian glass, pewter or nacre. Furthermore, the scientists did not find the earring hook that connects the jewel to the ear in the image. What kind of decor is it and how did it initially come about? It seems that these questions will remain without clear answers.

Have you already realized these secrets? Share your opinion with us in the comments.