10 Unexpected Secrets That Hide in Art Masterpieces / Bright Side

Thanks to modern technology, scientists manage to find new details on paintings of the past. Some paintings reveal hidden images under a layer of paint, while in others art historians find hidden characters. However, some questions can’t be answered even with the help of sophisticated technology. We decided to find out what discoveries can make us look at famous paintings in a different way.

Van Gogh’s Irises looked differently in the beginning.

When people first saw Van Gogh’s painting Irises, they were absolutely delighted. The canvas was filled with air and colors. One critic even remarked that the artist was able to truly understand and convey the exquisite nature of flowers. Nowadays, this work also makes a strong impression. However, as it turns out, we see it differently than the master’s contemporaries.

A recent detailed study has shown that the irises were originally a deep purple color. To get the right shade, Van Gogh mixed blue and red colors. Unfortunately, the pigments in the latter were sensitive to light and degraded over time. This is how the irises acquired their present blue color.

Girl with the Flute was probably painted not by Vermeer.

Only about 30 paintings belong to the brush of the famous master (at least that’s what art historians believe), and recently this list has been reduced by one more painting. Experts have long assumed that the Girl with a Flute could have been created by another artist, and recently their suspicions have been confirmed.

Unlike his other paintings, this one was not painted on canvas, but on a wooden board. A team of curators, restorers and scientists conducted a detailed study and found out that the technique of applying paint is slightly different and looks more careless. The unknown artist was clearly familiar with Vermeer’s style and used similar materials.

Perhaps the master did have an apprentice, although it was previously thought that he worked alone. Another option is that the painting could have been painted by Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria, who at that time was between 15 and 20 years old. Or Girl with a Flute is the result of mutual work of the master and another artist.

Underneath Paul Cézanne’s Still Life is most likely his self-portrait.

The artist painted this Still Life in 1865, during his “dark” period. Cézanne was then under the influence of the Spanish Baroque and the realism of the French painter Gustave Courbet, and had not yet developed his own distinctive style.

The museum’s chief restorer, while conducting a routine inspection of the Still Life, noticed unusual cracks in the paint. It is a usual thing for a 19th-century painting, but the surface was cracked in 2 places, and white paint could be seen from under the top layer, which the artist used only in small quantities on this canvas.

The restorer suspected that there might be something beneath the layer of paint and X-rayed the painting. The scan showed that the still life had been painted over a portrait. Judging by the pose of the man, it is a self-portrait of Cézanne.

It is quite possible that the expert managed to find one of the earliest works of the master, because at the time of completion of the still life, the artist was about 20 years old.

A small bird in this 15th-century painting raised many questions among historians.

The painting Madonna della Vittoria was created in 1496. At that time, the well-established trade routes between Europe and Southeast Asia didn’t exist. However, in the upper left corner, you can see a bird that looks very much like a yellow-crested cockatoo. This species used to inhabit some islands in Indonesia (now it’s classified as endangered). Given the cockatoo’s natural pose, it was probably painted from life.

But the researchers were concerned with one question: how could the bird get from Indonesia to Europe? Most likely, the cockatoo reached its destination along the Silk Road, and this journey could have taken many years. But since these parrots live up to 60 years, this journey was quite possible. Or the bird traveled to its new habitat via India. Either way, the story of the cockatoo’s wanderings would make a good story.

A demon was discovered in Joshua Reynolds’ painting.

For a long time, people didn’t even realize that Joshua Reynolds’ painting illustrating a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry VI had another character. Only recent restoration work, during which additional layers of varnish were removed, revealed that there was a demon hiding by the Cardinal’s bedside.

Perhaps the demon, which can easily be seen in Caroline Watson’s engraving, disappeared from the canvas for a reason. Reynolds took Shakespeare’s lines too literally and added a demon to the composition. Contemporaries didn’t like this willfulness: they criticized the artist, accusing him of bad taste and childishness.

Some even demanded to remove the demon from the canvas, although the master resisted in every possible way. In the following centuries, the devil gradually dissolved into the shadows. This happened not only for natural reasons. Researchers found that the painting was repainted several times, and 6 layers of varnish were applied over the image.

In the painting Bathers at Asnières, Seurat paid tribute to a famous chemist.

The artist created this painting in 1884, even before he started using his famous painting style, and 3 years later the master decided to tweak the work using a new technique. It was Seurat who began to apply pure colors to a canvas in small dot strokes, without mixing them on the palette. The painter assumed that at a distance, the dots of paint would optically blend, creating the desired image.

This idea was inspired, among other things, by the work of chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul. This is probably why Seurat painted 6 pipes in the background, making them look like paintbrushes. These pipes belonged to a factory that produced candles using the process invented by Chevreul. In this way, Seurat paid tribute to the chemist.

The painting Women in the Garden depicts the same woman.

One of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings depicts several women. However, the model for all the ladies was the artist’s future wife, 19-year-old Camille Doncieux. Although the painting irritated critics, it was later recognized.

It’s not known why Monet decided to use only one model for all the characters. Perhaps this was his way of expressing his love for his beloved, or to capture the versatility of her nature on canvas. Other researchers suggest that the master wanted to experiment with the effects of light and color and test how they affect the same face and body.

Vermeer may have painted The Lacemaker and his other paintings with the help of a camera.

For more than 100 years, art historians have been debating whether Vermeer used a camera obscura or not. The fact is that the master’s paintings are characterized by perfect perspective, superb composition and an amazing sense of light.

In addition, Vermeer worked perfectly with highlights, and some objects in the foreground seem blurred (as seen in the painting The Lacemaker). The camera obscura, a device that allows you to get an optical image of an object, captures these nuances better than the human eye.

In Vermeer’s time, many artists were familiar with this invention, but no one wanted to admit that they used it. Otherwise, the artist’s talent would have been immediately questioned. There is no evidence that Vermeer owned a camera obscura, although his good friend and neighbor was the scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who created excellent microscopes and lenses for his time. So, the artist could turn to him for help.

Some researchers are sure that Vermeer did not use a camera. 13 of his paintings have tiny holes in the canvas, which the painter most likely used to determine the exact perspective. Anyway, the question of the presence of a camera obscura in Vermeer’s studio is still open.

The painting Madame Léon Clapisson didn’t look like this before.

Pierre Auguste Renoir painted the portrait of Valentine Clapisson in 1883. The pale abstract background of the work beautifully emphasizes the woman’s dark blue dress and cream gloves. However, a recent study has revealed that the original tone of the work was quite different. A team of chemists used Raman spectroscopy to detect traces of decayed colors on the canvas and were able to restore the painting to the way the artist intended it to look.

Renoir made the background a fiery red, adding blue and pink strokes. Unfortunately, the artist used natural pigments to create the paint, which quickly deteriorated when exposed to light. Most likely, Renoir knew that the painting would turn pale over time. And although there were already more resistant dyes in those times, painters still preferred this material.

A study has revealed how Rembrandt created The Night Watch.

Previously, art historians could only guess how exactly the artist worked on his famous painting. But recently the canvas was scanned with a special X-ray machine and found traces of calcium under the strokes.

It turned out that Rembrandt first made several sketches on the canvas using paint with a high content of chalk, and it was these lines that the device was able to detect. Thus, initially the exquisite helmet of one of the men was decorated with feathers, but later the artist abandoned this idea.

And these famous paintings have a fascinating story behind.