Damn picture. D

Giovanni Bragolin, The Crying Boy. 1950s

Mystical stories and mysteries are associated with many works of painting. Moreover, some experts believe that dark and secret forces are involved in the creation of a number of paintings.

There are grounds for such a statement. Too often, amazing facts and inexplicable events happened to these fatal masterpieces - fires, deaths, the madness of the authors...
One of the most famous “cursed” paintings is “The Crying Boy” - a reproduction of a painting by the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin.

The story of its creation is as follows: the artist wanted to paint a portrait of a crying child and took his little son as a sitter.
But, since the baby could not cry on demand, the father deliberately brought him to tears by lighting matches in front of his face. The artist knew that his son was terrified of fire, but art was dearer to him than the nerves of his own child, and he continued to mock him.

One day, driven to the point of hysteria, the baby could not stand it and shouted, shedding tears: “Burn yourself!” This curse did not take long to come true - two weeks later the boy died of pneumonia, and soon his father also burned alive in his own house... This is the backstory.

The painting, or rather its reproduction, gained its ominous fame in 1985 in England. This happened thanks to a series of strange coincidences - fires in residential buildings began to occur one after another in Northern England. There were human casualties.
On September 4, 1985, the British newspaper The Sun published the article "Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy." In the article, couple Ron and May Hull from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, claimed that after their house burned down in a fire, amid the destruction, a cheap reproduction of a painting of a crying boy remained intact on the wall.

In addition, it was reported that Ron's brother Peter Hull worked at the Rotherham fire station, and one of his colleagues Alan Wilkinson claimed that very often firemen found an intact reproduction of The Crying Boy at fires.

And such reports became more and more numerous, until, finally, one of the fire inspectors publicly announced that in all the burned houses, without exception, the “Crying Boy” was found intact.

The newspaper stated that anyone who wants to get rid of the painting “The Crying Boy” can take it to the newspaper’s office, where the reproductions will be destroyed and the curse will be lifted from the unfortunate owners.

This whole story ended with the mass burning of paintings depicting a boy in tears. The burning event was planned to be held on the roof of the editorial building, but firefighters refused to participate in this pretentious show. And the burning took place outside the city. An article about this event appeared in the next issue of the newspaper.

To this day, “The Crying Boy” is haunted by notoriety, especially in Northern England. By the way, the original has not yet been found.

True, some doubters (especially here in Russia) deliberately hung this portrait on their wall, and, it seems, no one was burned. But still there are very few people who want to test the legend in practice.

I would like to add that some sources report that the artist did not burn, but died of natural causes in 1981 and was a fairly wealthy man.

The publisher of reproductions of "The Crying Boy" explained the fire resistance of the paintings by the quality of the paper, the fact that it was very thick.

In the press, and then on the Internet, the old story periodically comes to life again, and in a variety of variants: for example, with statements that if the reproduction is treated well, then the boy, on the contrary, will bring good luck to the owners, or that such fires occur in other places in the world.

It is difficult to judge where is truth and where is fiction. But it is better not to bring a reproduction of “The Crying Boy” into your home.
You never know...

Http://maxpark.com/community/6782/content/1310224

Reviews

I don't believe it either. It all depends on the psychological state of a person. Mystical powers are attributed to many paintings. Sometimes I even doubt it, although there are still coincidences. This is an article. Mystical secrets of paintings. http://maxpark.com/community/6782/content/1467383
And what do you think?

Rogova Anastasia 04/30/2019 at 20:10

Mystical stories and mysteries are associated with many works of painting. Moreover, some experts believe that dark and secret forces are involved in the creation of a number of paintings. There are grounds for such a statement. Too often, amazing facts and inexplicable events happened to these fatal masterpieces - fires, deaths, the madness of the authors...

One of the most famous “cursed” paintings is “The Crying Boy” - a reproduction of a painting by the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin. The story of its creation is as follows: the artist wanted to paint a portrait of a crying child and took his little son as a sitter. But, since the baby could not cry on demand, the father deliberately brought him to tears by lighting matches in front of his face. The artist knew that his son was terrified of fire, but art was dearer to him than the nerves of his own child, and he continued to mock him.

This happened thanks to a series of strange coincidences - fires in residential buildings began to occur one after another in Northern England. There were human casualties. Some victims who spoke with correspondents mentioned that of all the property, only a cheap reproduction depicting a crying child miraculously survived. And such reports became more and more numerous, until, finally, one of the fire inspectors publicly announced that in all the burned houses, without exception, the “Crying Boy” was found intact.

Immediately, the newspapers were overwhelmed by a wave of letters reporting various accidents, deaths and fires that occurred after the owners bought this painting. Of course, “The Crying Boy” immediately began to be considered cursed, the story of its creation surfaced and became overgrown with rumors and fiction... As a result, one of the newspapers published an official statement that everyone who has this reproduction must immediately get rid of it, and the authorities From now on it is forbidden to purchase and keep it at home.

To this day, “The Crying Boy” is haunted by notoriety, especially in Northern England. By the way, the original has not yet been found. True, some doubters (especially here in Russia) deliberately hung this portrait on their wall, and, it seems, no one was burned. But still there are very few people who want to test the legend in practice.

Another famous “fiery masterpiece” is considered "Water lilies" impressionist Monet. The artist himself was the first to suffer from it - his workshop almost burned down for unknown reasons. Then the new owners of “Water Lilies” burned down - a cabaret in Montmartre, the house of a French philanthropist, and even the New York Museum of Modern Art. Currently, the painting is in the Mormoton Museum, in France, and does not exhibit its “fire hazardous” properties. Bye.

Another, less well-known and outwardly unremarkable painting, the “arsonist,” hangs in the Royal Museum of Edinburgh. This portrait of an elderly man with outstretched arm. According to legend, sometimes the fingers on the hand of an old man painted in oil begin to move. And the one who saw this unusual phenomenon will definitely die from fire in the very near future. Two famous victims of the portrait are Lord Seymour and sea captain Belfast. They both claimed to have seen the old man move his fingers, and both subsequently died in the fire. Superstitious townspeople even demanded that the director of the museum remove the dangerous painting out of harm's way, but he, of course, did not agree - it is this nondescript portrait of no particular value that attracts most visitors.

Famous "Gioconda" Leonardo da Vinci not only admires, but also frightens people. In addition to assumptions, fiction, legends about the work itself and about the smile of Mona Lisa, there is a theory that this most famous portrait in the world has an extremely negative effect on the beholder. For example, more than a hundred cases have been officially registered in which visitors who looked at the painting for a long time lost consciousness. The most famous case occurred with the French writer Stendhal, who fainted while admiring a masterpiece. It is known that Mona Lisa herself, who posed for the artist, died young, at the age of 28. And the great master Leonardo himself did not work on any of his creations as long and carefully as on the La Gioconda. For six years, until his death, Leonardo rewrote and corrected the painting, but he never fully achieved what he wanted.

Painting by Velazquez "Venus with a Mirror" also enjoyed deserved notoriety. Everyone who bought it either went bankrupt or died a violent death. Even museums did not really want to include its main composition, and the painting constantly changed its “registration”. It ended with the fact that one day a crazy visitor attacked the canvas and cut it with a knife.

Another “cursed” painting that is widely known is the work of a Californian surrealist artist "Hands Resist Him"("Hands Resist Him") by Bill Stoneham. The artist painted it in 1972 from a photograph in which he and his younger sister stand in front of their home. In the picture, a boy with unclear facial features and a doll the size of a living girl froze in front of a glass door, to which the small hands of children are pressed from the inside. There are many creepy stories associated with this picture. It all started with the fact that the first art critic who saw and appreciated the work died suddenly.

Then the picture was acquired by an American actor, who also did not live long. After his death, the work disappeared for a short time, but then it was accidentally found in a trash heap. The family who picked up the nightmare masterpiece thought of hanging it in the nursery. As a result, the little daughter began to run into her parents’ bedroom every night and scream that the children in the picture were fighting and changing their location. My father installed a motion-sensing camera in the room, and it went off several times during the night.

Of course, the family hastened to get rid of such a gift of fate, and soon Hands Resist Him put up for online auction. And then numerous letters poured in to the organizers with complaints that while viewing the film, people felt sick, and some even had heart attacks. It was bought by the owner of a private art gallery, and now complaints have begun to come to him. Two American exorcists even approached him with offers of their services. And psychics who have seen the picture unanimously claim that evil emanates from it.

There are several masterpieces of Russian painting that also have sad stories. For example, the picture everyone knows from school "Troika" Perova. This touching and sad picture depicts three peasant children from poor families who are pulling a heavy load, harnessed to it in the manner of draft horses. In the center is a blond little boy. Perov was looking for a child for the picture until he met a woman and her 12-year-old son named Vasya, who were walking through Moscow on a pilgrimage. Vasya remained the only consolation of his mother, who buried her husband and other children. At first she did not want her son to pose for the painter, but then she agreed. However, soon after the painting was completed, the boy died... It is known that after the death of her son, a poor woman came to Perov, begging him to sell her a portrait of her beloved child, but the painting was already hanging in the Tretyakov Gallery. True, Perov responded to his mother’s grief and painted a portrait of Vasya separately especially for her.

One of the brightest and most extraordinary geniuses of Russian painting, Mikhail Vrubel, has works that are also associated with the personal tragedies of the artist himself. Thus, the portrait of his beloved son Savva was painted by him shortly before the child’s death. Moreover, the boy fell ill unexpectedly and died suddenly. A "Demon Defeated" had a detrimental effect on the psyche and health of Vrubel himself.

The artist could not tear himself away from the picture, he continued to add to the face of the defeated Spirit, and also change the color. “The Defeated Demon” was already hanging at the exhibition, and Vrubel kept coming into the hall, not paying attention to the visitors, sat down in front of the painting and continued to work, as if possessed. Those close to him became concerned about his condition, and he was examined by the famous Russian psychiatrist Bekhterev. The diagnosis was terrible - tabes spinal cord, near madness and death. Vrubel was admitted to the hospital, but the treatment did not help, and he soon died.

An interesting story is connected with the picture "Maslenitsa", which for a long time adorned the hall of the Ukraine Hotel. It hung and hung, no one really looked at it, until it suddenly became clear that the author of this work was a mentally ill person named Kuplin, who in his own way copied the painting of the artist Antonov. Actually, nothing special There is nothing terrible or outstanding in the picture of a mentally ill person, but for six months it excited the vastness of the Runet.

One student wrote a blog post about her in 2006. Its essence boiled down to the fact that, according to a professor at one of the Moscow universities, there is one hundred percent, but not obvious sign in the picture, by which it is immediately clear that the artist is crazy. And even supposedly based on this sign, you can immediately make a correct diagnosis. But, as the student wrote, the cunning professor did not discover the sign, but only gave vague hints. And so, they say, people, help whoever can, because I can’t find it myself, I’m all exhausted and tired. It’s not hard to imagine what started here.

Rogova Anastasia 04/30/2019 at 20:10

INEngland once found a painting called "The Crying Boy", copies of which became very popular. Later, all copies of the painting were burned by the British.

The painting turned out to be not simple or even “cursed”; fires occurred in houses where there was a copy of it. There were so many fires that it was hardly a coincidence - everything burned down except this picture...

The artist and author of the painting is the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin (also known as Bruno Amadio), the father of the child depicted in it, mocked his son by lighting matches in front of the baby’s face.

The fact is that the boy was deathly afraid of fire, and the man, thus, tried to achieve brightness, vitality and naturalness of the canvas. The boy was crying - the artist was drawing. One day the little boy shouted at his father: “Burn yourself!” A month later, the child died of pneumonia. And a couple of weeks later, the artist’s charred body was found in his own house next to a painting of a crying boy that had survived the fire.

The painting ended up with the owners of one of the printing houses, who, having not found the copyright holder and doing a little marketing, found out that a good business could be made from it. And indeed, copies of “The Crying Boy” began to sell like hotcakes. Unfortunately, the consequences of such a business have become no less “hot”.

The famous English expert in the field of paranormal phenomena, Richard Lazarus, who was “in the thick of things,” conducted his own investigation into this matter.

After a series of unexplained fires in several houses in Britain, it was discovered that in each room where the fire started there hung a reproduction of a painting of a crying boy. This detail, perhaps, would have gone unnoticed if not for one circumstance: in all cases, without exception, the painting remained unharmed, while all other things burned.

The phenomenon came to public attention in early September 1985 when Yorkshire fireman Peter Hall went to the press to report that fire brigades in the north of England had encountered repeated fires over the past summer that destroyed everything in the premises except a cheap reproduction pictures of a crying boy. The causes of the fires in these cases remained undisclosed.

Hall started talking about this miracle after his own brother Ron, not believing the story, bought a reproduction and hung it in his room to prove that it was all fiction, and returned from work the next day to find that the house was almost completely his burned out. Seeing how the painting “The Crying Boy” was taken out of the ruins of the burnt house, completely undamaged, Ron Hall began to cry himself.

After this interview, a huge number of letters poured into the newspaper's editors, in which victims of the fires wrote about the picture of a crying boy lying unharmed among the ruins of their burnt houses.

Dora Brand, from Mitcham, in Surrey, saw her house reduced to ashes six weeks after she bought the painting, and although she owned more than a hundred others, this was the only one that survived.

Sandra Craske, from Kilburn, said she, her sister, mother and their friend were all burned after each had their own copy. Other information came from Leeds, Nottingham, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight. On the twenty-first of October, Parillo's Pizza Palace, in Great Yartmouth, Norfolk, was burned to the ground, although The Boy was left in excellent condition. Three days later the Godbers of Herrinthorpe in South Yorkshire also lost their home; During the fire, the reproduction that hung in their living room remained undamaged, although all the other paintings burned to the ground.

The next day in Heswapple, Merseyside, a pair of paintings hanging in the living and dining room of the Amos family home survived a gas explosion that tore the entire building apart. Less than 24 hours later there was a new report of the Crying Boy fire, this time from the home of former fireman Fred Trower from Telford, Shropshire. One newspaper suggested that all owners of the painting arrange a mass burning of it.

While most in Britain believed the whole story was a long-running joke, others were less sure. By November, some of the former owners of “The Boy” had acquired nervous illnesses, because it always seemed to them that the “spirit” of the painting they had destroyed was now intending to take revenge.

On the twelfth of November, Malcolm Vaughan from Gloucestershire helped his neighbor burn another "Crying Boy". He returned home and found that the entire living room was already on fire, which had ignited inexplicably.

A few weeks later, a mysterious flame ripped through a house in Weston nad Maroy, Avon, killing its occupant, sixty-seven-year-old William Armitage, and the case made headlines when the painting was found intact next to the charred body of an old man. One of the firefighters who tried to put out the fire later said: “I never believed in curses before. But when you see a intact picture in a completely burned room, and it is the only thing that was not damaged, then you realize that this has crossed all boundaries.” .

Another of the victims of this painting was the famous art collector Dora Brand, who reported that after the fire, out of her entire once large and beautiful collection of paintings, only one painting remained - “The Crying Boy.”

After all these incidents with the painting, an advertisement appeared in the newspaper calling on everyone who has a reproduction of this painting to burn it immediately.

This year in the UK was the year of mass painting burnings. Only in this way did the British get rid of this unusual phenomenon, which is still unsolved. By the way, the original of this painting has not yet been found. Many English people still believe that the painting was a curse. And in Northern England it is officially prohibited to have the painting “The Crying Boy” in your home.

The "Crying Boy" phenomenon remains unexplained.

In addition to this, there are other masterpieces of this kind - “Insomnia”
and "The Demon Defeated" by Vrubel
, "Water Lilies" by Monet
, "Adoration of the Magi" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
"Troika"Vasily Grigorievich Perov

, "La Gioconda" by Da Vinci.
.. And of course the magnificent Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez and his “Venus with a Mirror”.

This masterpiece by Giovanni Bragolin has become notorious. Over the history of the painting “The Crying Boy,” the painting has changed several owners. But every time she was brought to a new house, trouble came to the home. For inexplicable reasons, a fire broke out very soon. And, what is most interesting, the picture remained untouched.

There is an opinion that the power of the cursed portrait is so great that not only the original, but even the reproduction brings misfortune. Some people believe that simply printing a picture and hanging it on the wall is enough to bring bad luck upon oneself. What is the secret of the “Crying Boy”?

The history of the painting

Like many artists, Giovanni Bragolin was sensitive to his work. Perhaps even too reverently. He chose his own son as the model for the painting “The Crying Boy.” But bad luck - the child did not want to “cry for the sake of art.” Then Giovanni began to burn matches in front of his son, who was terrified of the flame.

Each time the child cried in fear. When the picture was almost completed, the boy, in hysterics, threw out the phrase: “!” The curse came true, and the artist burned down in his own house. The mysterious painting remained untouched by the flames.

A series of unexplained fires

Through UK stores it was Over 50,000 reproductions of the painting “The Crying Boy” have been sold. For the most part they dispersed to the working-class neighborhoods of Northern England. Soon, a series of terrible and inexplicable events occurred, the apogee of which occurred in the summer and autumn of 1985.

A fireman from Yorkshire named Peter Hall brought public attention to the mysterious problem. In his interview, Hall said that throughout Northern England, fire crews are finding intact copies of the painting “The Crying Boy” at fire scenes. Hall decided to talk about it only after his brother Roy deliberately acquired a copy of the “cursed portrait.”

Roy Hall wanted to prove to his brother that the rumors surrounding the painting by Bragolin were unfounded. However, shortly after purchasing the reproduction, his house, located in Svallonest, burned to the ground for unknown reasons. The mysterious picture remained untouched as always.

The Adventures of the Crying Boy

British newspapers began to receive a flood of calls and letters from the owners of The Boy, who had suffered in a similar way. Dora Brand, who lives in Mitcham (Surrey), reported that her house burned down a month and a half after purchasing the cursed painting. In addition to this painting, more than a hundred paintings were stored in her house, all of them burned, but “The Boy” did not.

Sandra Craske, from Kilburn, said her mother, sister, a mutual friend and herself were victims of the fire. The fire occurred after each of them purchased a copy of the infamous painting. Similar messages came from Oxfordshire, from Leeds, from the Isle of Wight.

One British newspaper suggested that the owners of the reproduction organize a mass burning of the painting in order to... It should be noted that quite a few followed this advice. However, the "Crying Boy" did not want to give up his position easily. So one of the next “victims of art” was Malcolm Vaughan from Gloucestershire, who helped his neighbor destroy the ominous painting. Returning home, Mr. Vaughan discovered that the entire living room was engulfed in flames that had broken out for some unknown reason.

A few weeks later, a 67-year-old resident of the county of Avon (Weston nad Maroy) named William Armitage burned down in his own home. One of the firefighters called to the scene later admitted that he had never believed in curses before. But the intact picture that lay next to the charred body of the old man made him change his mind.