Final secret of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ revealed
A barely legible phrase scribbled on a modern masterpiece gives new insight into the private thoughts of one of the world’s great painters.
Researchers in Norway used infrared photography to analyse the mysterious words scrawled on Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. Annar Bjorgli/The National Museum
Edvard Munch’s The Scream, from 1893, is one of the world’s most famous paintings, but for years art historians have mostly ignored a tiny inscription, written in pencil, at the upper left corner of its frame, reading: “Could only have been painted by a madman”.
Who wrote the sentence there? Some thought a disgruntled viewer might have vandalised the work while it was in a gallery; others imagined it was the artist himself who had jotted the enigmatic sentence. But then why?
