9 Secrets Hidden in World Famous Paintings

Many works of world painting hide details known only to great researchers or historians. Some of them were discovered after hundreds of years of appreciation and managed to change the existing understanding of the work until then.

We, from awesome.club, we collected some surprising secrets of the most famous paintings of all time. Check out!

Many works of art change over the years. That’s what happened to Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer. Although we see the empty background, it is not what it appears to be. Vermeer painted a green curtain that eventually faded due to physical and chemical changes. The pearl is also an illusion, as they are just translucent and opaque strokes of white paint.

This painting by Diego Velázquez hides several mysteries. One of them has to do with the king and queen reflected in a mirror, a reflection that puts them in the same position as the spectator: the couple is both outside and inside the frame. It is not known if they were included like this to be highlighted, or because they were simply observing the artist painting his daughter, the Infanta Margarita.

Artist Edvard Munch’s work is often interpreted as a response to the excessive pressures of modern life. However, his intention was completely different, as reported by Munch himself: “One afternoon I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and sick. I stopped and looked out over the fjord: the sun was setting and the clouds turned blood red. I felt a scream go through nature and thought I heard it. I painted this picture, I painted the clouds like real blood. The color screamed.

When Salvador Dalí painted this work, his artistic practice was guided by the “paranoid-critical method”. The technique, developed by the artist in the 1930s, is based on self-induced paranoia and hallucinations to inspire a work of art. This practice was particularly instrumental in the creation of Dalí’s “hand-painted dream photographs”, a collection of works whose stylistic roots are in realism, albeit unrealistic in subject matter.

Physicist José Luis Aragón compared the turbulent play of light and shadow in The Starry Night with the mathematical expression of turbulence in natural events such as eddies and air currents. He found that they coincided. Two other Van Gogh paintings also feature this mathematical parallel. The physicist suggests that the artist painted them during periods of extreme mental agitation, and that this was his original way of communicating what was going on in his mind.

This painting by Hans Holbein includes a rare object in the foreground, which is quite difficult to distinguish except when viewers are to the right of the canvas. In this position it is possible to understand that it is a skull. Many believe that the painting was commissioned with the intention of hanging it on a wall with an entrance to its right, meaning viewers would have first encountered the skull, which would dissolve as they moved forward. constructions.

There is one detail in this fresco by Raphael—near the central foreground of the painting—that stands out as going largely unnoticed for half a millennium. Next to the left arm of the philosopher Heraclitus (foreground, center of the canvas), an inkpot dangles in the corner of a large block of marble, and a movement of the elbow would cause it to fall, break and open a black hole in the heart of the work. This object transforms the fresco into a much deeper reflection on the mysteries of existence.

Although at first glance this painting appears to be just a terrace of a cafe in a French city, there is a theory that Van Gogh created his version of The Last Supper here, as it shows a central figure with long hair surrounded by 12 individuals.

Botticelli’s painting is a celebration of spring and the fertility associated with the season. That’s because 500 different species of plants are represented on the board. Of these, 190 are from different flowers, among which botanists have identified at least 130 for their very specific details.

What intention would be behind the secrets hidden by the artists in their works? Have you seen any of these paintings in person? Tell us in the comments!