Take a deep dive into the weird world of art from the past. Meet the artist obsessed with decomposing corpses, an artist whose paintings include characters getting up to some freaky things, and paint with one bizarre ingredient you won't believe. Are you ready to take a journey of the creepy, gross and unexpected? If you are then let's begin.
Intro
Art from the past got pretty creepy like this painting by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen.
A fool wears a costume with the ears of an ass, and he holds metal glasses frames he uses to insult people that wear glasses.
The Laughing Fool, 1500
this weird painting by Quentin Matsys shows a grotesque old hag with an upturned nose with flared nostrils, her wrinkled skin hanging low on her face, her eyes sunken into her face and her tight corset pushing up her wrinkly old boobs.
The Ugly Duchess, 1513
1791-1824
Théodore Géricault
Artist
Collector Of Corpses
Painter of the Insane
The Severed Heads, 1810
Théodore Géricault was known for drawing and painting the dead including dead bodies in the morgue, studied the faces of dying patients on their deathbeds and even took home a severed head from a lunatic asylum for two weeks.
Théodore Géricault would take home severed body parts to paint their rotting flesh.
The Raft of the Medusa,1819
By Théodore Géricault
A true tale of
loss,insanity
and cannibalism
The painting is inspired by the gruesome true story of the French frigate Méduse who ran aground on a sandbank in June 1816. Shortly after abandoning the ship the raft's survivors descended into savagery slaughtering mutineers, resorting to cannibalism and throwing the weakest overboard.
Let's Take A Closer Look
The Dead Soldier
In the bottom left of the painting lays the rotting corpse of a soldier. He has been killed, dismembered and eaten by the others. The soldier represents suffering, desperation and death.
Father and Son
A Father cradles the dead body of his son as he looks blankly
into the distance. These two characters symbolise the human spirit and how it can't be crushed under unimaginable tragedy.
Figures Under the Mast
These characters represent determination and were based on the actual survivors of the disaster that the artist drew and interviewed as part of his research.
The Signallers
Figures that wave in desperation at a ship far in the distance, The signallers symbolize the struggle for life and the ship represents hope and survival.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Died 1569
Painter Of Hidden Meanings
By Pieter Bruegel the Elder
The Dutch Proverb
The Where's Wally Of The 16th Century
This might just look like a painting of peasants going about their ordinary lives, but if you look closer they are getting up to some freaky things.
Each Peasant Represents a Different Proverb
Proverb-
To be able to tie even the devil to a pillow.
Meaning-
Obstinacy overcomes everything
Proverb-
Meaning-
To carry out a dangerous or impractical plan
Proverb-
Meaning-
To despise everything
Proverb-
Meaning-
To trick somebody
Proverb-
Meaning-
To waste one's time on a futile endeavour
MUMMY BROWN
It might sound crazy that mummies from ancient Egypt were used to make brown paint.
But starting from the 16th century mummies were ground into a powder and mixed with different ingredients to create mummy brown paint.
A mummy dealer in Egypt, 1875
Mummy Brown became so popular in the 17th century that there was a shortage of Egyptian mummies with them sometimes being replaced with cats, recently deceased criminals and slaves.
It was said to "flow from the brush with delightful freedom and evenness."
Liberty Leading the People,1830
Eugene Delacroix was known for using mummy brown and may have used it for this painting.
By Eugene Delacroix
Not all artists knew it contained mummies
When artist Edward Burne-Jones was told by a friend that his brown paint was made from crushed Egyptian mummies he was so shocked that he took his mummy brown paint and insisted on giving it a decent burial immediately.
Having gone on an epic journey through the weird and creepy world of art history. From the artist who painted severed limbs, decapitated heads and tales of cannibalism, the painting that looks normal from a distance but weird up close and the paint with a sinister past, this shows not all art history has to be boring.