Oscar Wilde's novel about the portrait of mystical power is one of the most sinister in literary history. However, the tradition of demonizing man-made canvases comes from the depths of centuries: long before the emergence of art, some images and symbols were worshiped as the personification of the inscrutable forces of nature. In every museum and gallery in the world, there is at least one exhibit with which the most incredible stories are connected, which are not always amenable to explanation …
Beloved ideal
The portrait of Maria Lopukhina by Vladimir Borovikovsky is a painting that everyone in Russia knows. Once upon a time, language teachers at least once a year taught a lesson on the connection between painting and literature. And this portrait was shown without fail, reading a poem dedicated to him by Yakov Polonsky:
But Borovikovsky saved her beauty.
So part of her soul did not fly away from us, And there will be this look and this beauty of the body
To attract indifferent offspring to her, Promotional video:
Teaching him to love, suffer, forgive, be silent
The discreet, delicate beauty of a young woman is skillfully inscribed in a Russian landscape dear to the heart: birches seem to be reflected on the dress, cornflowers are in tone with the belt, a falling shawl is a response to poured ears and drooping roses.
Portrait of Maria Lopukhina. Artist V. Borovikovsky. 1797 g.
Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina (1779-1803) from the Tolstoy family at the age of eighteen married the jägermeister, an actual chamberlain at the court of Paul the First. A ceremonial portrait for her wedding was commissioned in 1797 by the most fashionable artist. The husband was older, the marriage did not work out, and Maria's fate was unhappy. At twenty-four she was extinguished from consumption. It turned out that her entire earthly purpose was for the artist to paint from her the ideal of a young Russian woman of the late 18th century.
After this sad death, the legend spread that her father, the master of the Masonic lodge, lured into the picture the soul of his beloved daughter. It got to the point that young girls were forbidden to look at the portrait in order to avoid untimely death. However, the relic was kept in the family, and there was no talk of mass hysteria.
In 1880, Tretyakov bought this work of Borovikovsky for his gallery. Bad rumors were instantly suppressed, and the artistic value of the portrait was deservedly praised by connoisseurs of high art.
We must pay tribute to the great portrait painter: you cannot take your eyes off the 18-year-old aristocrat in the Tretyakov Gallery: her face exudes the charm and freshness of youth. And if you look at the picture a little longer, then Maria Ivanovna really seems to come to life. However, this is the property of all good portraits and our imagination.
Fire breathing lilies
Water lilies. Clouds”by the impressionist Claude Monet (1903) - one of the most innovative paintings for its time. She literally hypnotizes with sun glare on the water, reflection of clouds, and the play of light and shadow on it is a masterpiece.
Water lilies. Clouds. Artist K. Monet. 1903 g.
For the last 30 years of his life, Monet lived with his many household members in the village of Giverny between Rouen and Paris. Here he bought 7,500 sq. meters of meadow, drained it, created a pond, connecting it with a channel with the river Ept.
In this water garden, a Japanese arched bridge was even erected, familiar to the whole world from several paintings. In 1890, Monet, as he himself wrote, "took up a series with different effects", where he tried to express the whole gamut of human feelings depending on the lighting of the garden at different times of the day. He called his paintings reflective landscapes: there is no horizon on them, and at the same time, each fragment contains trees, clouds, and endless shades of colors. "All the tones of red, yellow, pink, blue, green, lilac are here, in a small piece of water, where the whole sky, all space is revealed to us." More than 80 paintings by Monet with water lilies and lilies have survived. The critics were delighted.
One of them is “Water lilies. Clouds”has a strange history. Like Shakespeare's Macbeth, she is believed to be causing a fire.
The first fire happened in Monet's studio, when he and his friends brushed aside the completion of work on the painting. "Lilies" migrated to a cabaret in Montmartre, but a month later it burned down, although the picture itself was not damaged
Soon it was bought by the philanthropist Oscar Schmitz, and a fire broke out for the third time in his Parisian home. It happened a year after she appeared there. Moreover, the fire started just in the office where the "Lilies" hung. Then the miraculously survived painting ended up in the New York Museum of Modern Art. But four months later, in 1958, a fire broke out here, and this time the canvas was significantly damaged. Further, the trail ends.
Where are these "Lilies" now? To the request, Internet catalogs answer: "Location unknown." Or shyly: "Private collection".
Child's burning curse
The Crying Boy by Bruno Amadio, known as Bragolin (1911-1981), is also considered a "bad" painting. He created a whole series of "Gipsy Boys" (Gipsy Boys) of 27 canvases, the young characters of which are distinguished by a gloomy, tragic expression on their faces. There is a version that these were orphans, victims of the Second World War, whom he found in an orphanage in Spain.
In the early 1950s, a publishing house published reproductions of this series with a circulation of 50 thousand copies, and they quickly sold out. One of them was The Crying Boy, which gained the most popularity. Bragolin made at least 50 author's copies only for the needs of tourists.
Crying boy. Artist Bragolin (Bruno Amadio). 1940s
In 1985, an alleged old legend related to the history of the painting's creation surfaced. They say that the artist, who could not make the little model cry in any way, brought him to hysterics, striking matches in front of his face. In the end, the boy allegedly shouted: "Yes, so that you burn yourself!"
In September, a certain Hull family announced in the Sun newspaper that their house had burned down, leaving only a reproduction of the famous Crying Boy on the wall untouched by the fire. The newspaper, with the aim of increasing circulation, tracked a chain of fires in northern England, where the largest number of copies were sold.
And every time the same thing: the child looked at the ashes from the picture in tears - the only thing that remained after the misfortune. The Sun urged the owners of the reproductions to dispose of them immediately. The panic gradually subsided, but since then, firefighters have superstitiously considered "Crying Boy", if not the cause, then the foreshadowing of spontaneous ignition.
An interesting story took place in one fire station, where, in order to debunk superstition, a copy of "Boy" was hung up, looking at adults with a living reproach. A few days later, all meals in the kitchen of the fire station burned down.
True, they say that if you treat the "Crying Boy" with love and affection, he brings good luck. However, no one willing to take a chance and hang a picture at home for the purpose of experiment has yet been found
Taking out the soul
Another canvas, fanned with a strange glory - "Hands Resist Him" by Bill Stoneham (1972). On it next to the boy there is a doll, frighteningly similar to a living girl. And behind the glass door, many hands reach out to them. It is believed that if you look at a picture for more than five seconds, it takes out the soul.
The artist interprets his work as follows: the hero of the picture is himself (Bill copied himself from a child's photograph); the door separates real life from the world of dreams; the doll is a guide between the two worlds, and the hands symbolize many different possibilities.
"Hands resist him." Artist B. Stoneham. 1972 year
The name is random: the artist was in a hurry to hand over the order, and then he turned up a poem just composed by his wife, "Hands resist him."
The art critic who first appreciated the painting died soon after. But she acquired a truly scandalous fame after the exhibition, where several visitors in front of her felt sick: someone involuntarily cried, someone fainted.
"Hands" was bought by actor John Marley. After his death in 1984, the painting was taken to a landfill, where it was picked up by a random family who decorated the bedroom of their four-year-old daughter. On the very first night, the baby woke up the parents with screams that the children in the picture were fighting! On another occasion, she said that she saw both children on the other side of the door. In the end, a tracking sensor was installed in the nursery - and it worked more than once during the night.
The painting for $ 199 was put up on the eBay online auction - with a warning about possible psychic impact. Soon after its appearance on the site, users began to complain about poor health, nausea and attacks of angina pectoris.
For a little over a thousand dollars, it was bought by Kim Smith, the owner of the gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it is still located.
There are not many who want to get to know her. Smith says that once a group of men stood in deathly silence for twenty minutes in front of a painting, until someone said: "What a horror …"
Stoneham, whose site is easy to find on the Internet, the topic, it turns out, continued. In 2004, 32 years after the creation of the painting "Hands Resist Him", he wrote a pair for it - "Resistance on the Threshold." And not so long ago, in 2012, he completed the triptych with the canvas "The Threshold of Revelations." Their content boils down to the fact that the doll, removing the tight mask, eventually turns into a real girl, and the boy - into a decrepit old man. The self-portrait resemblance between the artist and the hero of the paintings is evident - with all traces of a difficult artistic life. That is, returning to "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", we note that Stoneham himself over the years, alas, has not grown younger.
Meanwhile, Kim Smith now and then receives tempting offers with six-figure numbers, but is not ready to part with the attraction thundered all over the world. He considers "Hands" to amuse the gallery owner's vanity with proof that there is nothing in this world more mysterious than paintings on a simple canvas.
Andrey Arder