The curse of the painting "Crying Boy" (3 photos). Giovanni Bragolin, painting "The Crying Boy": history, description and photo

Along with paintings of political and social protest, mankind also knows such paintings that inexplicably bring misfortune and even death to people. They are called curse paintings or killer paintings. To fall under the influence of their villainous spells, you don’t need to keep such paintings in your home. Often evil rock begins to pursue people after the first glance at them.

Curse of the Crying Boy

In the early 1980s, a painting called “The Crying Boy” was found in England, and copies of it immediately became very popular. But the painting was soon declared cursed - the story about it was on the front pages of newspapers throughout the UK in the summer and autumn of 1985.

The incredible fate of the painting is explained by the following: after a series of unexplained house fires, it was discovered that the same painting - a cheap reproduction of a crying boy - was present in each of the rooms where the fire started. This detail might be dismissed as an absurd coincidence, if it were not for the fact that in all cases, without exception, only this painting escaped damage, while everything around it burned to the ground.
The unusual phenomenon became public knowledge in the summer of 1985, when Peter Hall, a Yorkshire fireman, said in a newspaper interview that fire brigades across Northern England had found countless copies of this very painting that had remained untouched by the fire.
Hall only spilled the beans after his own brother Roy, who didn't believe the story, deliberately bought a copy of The Crying Boy to disprove its curse, and shortly afterwards his house in Swallonest, south Yorkshire, for reasons unclear, burned to the ground. Seeing that the painting lay completely intact in the middle of the charred ruins, Roy Hall hastily crushed it with his boot.

Following this publication, the British media received a flurry of letters and calls from the owners of “Boy” who suffered in the same way. So, Dora Brand from Mitcham, in Surrey, saw her house turn into ashes six weeks after she bought the painting. And although she had more than 100 other paintings, this was the one that survived. Sandra Craske, from Kilburn, said she, her sister, mother and their friend were all burned after they each purchased a copy of The Boy.
Information also came from Leeds, Nottingham County, from Oxfordshire and from about. White. On October 21, Parillo's Pizza Palace, in Great Yartmouth, Norfolk, burned to ashes, but The Boy was left in excellent condition. Three days later the Godbers, from Herrinthorpe, South Yorkshire, also lost their home. During the fire, the reproduction hanging in their living room remained undamaged, although everything around it was completely burned. The next day in Heswapple, Merseyside, a pair of Boy paintings hanging in the living and dining room of the Amos family home survived while the entire building... was torn apart by a gas explosion. Then "The Boy" made himself known with another fire at the house of Fred Trower from Telford, Shropshire.

One of the newspapers immediately invited all owners of the painting to organize a mass burning of it. And although most in Britain believed that the whole story was a long-running joke, the former owners of "The Boy" did not agree with this. By November 1985, some former owners of “The Boy” had acquired nervous illnesses because it always seemed to them that the spirit of the painting they had destroyed intended to take revenge on them. Meanwhile, mysterious fires continued throughout the country. One of the firefighters later admitted: “I never believed in curses before. But when you see an intact painting in a completely burned room, and it is the only thing that was not damaged, then you understand that this has crossed all boundaries.” And on the night of November 5, 1985, bonfires burned throughout England, where residents burned thousands of reproductions of “The Crying Boy.”

What was it? How can a painting cause a fire in which everything but itself burns? Mystics pointed to poltergeists or evil spirit, who lived in the Crying Boy. But why then did copies of this painting have the same effect? There are researchers here paranormal phenomena They suggested that the reason was the painting itself, or rather its image. Perhaps the drawing itself contained the key, and it was the image that caused the phenomenon that caused almost everything to burn except the painting itself.

In turn, psychics and dowsing specialists argued that all works of art retain part of the energy of their creators, and this energy can be both positive and negative. However, this did not explain the terrible phenomenon of the “Boy”. According to psychics, paintings can only influence people’s mood and well-being, but not cause fires.
Some researchers of the phenomenon insisted that the artist who painted the picture mistreated the model, and the boy uttered a curse in retaliation. But skeptics who saw in this story only random coincidences and manifestations of prejudice, rejected such an explanation. And the phenomenon of the “Crying Boy” remains unexplained to this day.

"Scream" brings death

Another mystical story is associated with famous painting Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's "The Scream". It is considered one of the most recognizable in world painting and is even called canonical, like Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” ​​or Malevich’s “Black Square”.


The painting depicts a hairless, suffering creature with a head like an upside-down pear, with her palms pressed to her ears in horror and her mouth open in a silent scream. The convulsive waves of this creature’s torment, like an echo, disperse in the air around its head. This man (or woman) seems trapped in his own scream and has covered his ears to block it out.

A mystical curse is associated with this painting, which, according to art critic and Munch specialist Alexander Prufrock, is confirmed real stories. Dozens of people who in one way or another came into contact with the canvas, whose value is estimated at $70 million, were exposed to evil fate: they fell ill, quarreled with loved ones, fell into severe depression or suddenly died. All this gave the painting a bad reputation, and museum visitors in Oslo looked at it with caution.
But even here there was no escape from her. One day, a museum employee accidentally dropped the painting. After some time, he began to have terrible headaches, although he had not suffered from them before. The migraine attacks became more and more frequent and severe: the poor man finally could not stand it and committed suicide.
Another time, a museum worker dropped a painting while it was being hung from one wall to another. A week later, he was in a terrible car accident, which resulted in broken legs, arms, several ribs, a fractured pelvis and a severe concussion. And one day one of the museum visitors decided to touch the painting with his finger, and a few days later there was a fire at his house in which he burned alive.
The life of Munch himself, born in 1863, was also a series of endless tragedies and shocks: illness, death of relatives, madness, for which he was treated with electric shock. He never married because the thought of sex terrified him. The artist died at the age of 81, leaving a huge gift to the city of Oslo creative heritage: 1200 paintings, 4500 sketches and 18 thousand graphic works. But the pinnacle of his work remains “Scream”.

Other works by the artist:

Wave

Self-portrait with a bottle of wine

Melancholy

“People with weak psyches should not watch!”

No less scandalous fame Also used is the painting Hands Resist Him by the American Bill Stoneham, painted by him in 1972 from an old photograph in which he was photographed at the age of 5. There is even a special recommendation regarding this picture that says: “People with weak psyches should not watch it.” The scandal surrounding the painting began after one of the exhibitions where it was exhibited. Mentally unbalanced people who viewed it suddenly became ill - they lost consciousness, began to cry for no reason, and had convulsions.

And for the first time the painting was shown to the owner and art critic of the Los Angeles Times, who later died. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. The painting was then acquired by actor John Marley (died 1984). Then the most interesting part begins: the painting was unexpectedly discovered in a landfill among a pile of garbage. The couple who found it brought the painting home, and already on the first night their little 4-year-old daughter ran into her parents’ bedroom screaming that the children depicted in the painting were fighting. The next night, the daughter reported that the children in the painting were outside the door. Then the head of the family installed a motion-sensitive video camera overnight in the room where the painting hung. To his amazement, the video camera went off several times!

After this, the painting was put up for auction on eBay. Soon, eBay administrators began receiving letters to their email addresses with complaints about poor health, loss of consciousness, and even heart attacks. The painting sold for $1,025, from a starting price of $199. It was purchased by Kim Smith from a small town near Chicago for his art gallery.
That would have been the end of the story, but letters of complaint now began to arrive at Smith's address. Many of them, as before, spoke of feeling unwell after viewing the film. But there were those who wrote about the evil emanating from the canvas, and therefore they demanded that it be burned.
American psychics Ed and Lorraine Warren, who became famous after exorcizing demons in the Amityville House in 1979, offered their services to Smith, but nothing helped. Mediums associate the painting with the well-known murder of Satillo in the hills of California in the United States. The ghosts of the two children, they claim, still haunt the house in the hills. “We saw the boy. He wore a light T-shirt and shorts. His sister was always in the shadows. He seemed to be protecting her. Their names were Tom and Laura, and they are exactly like the children depicted in the picture,” say the psychics.

Repin's evil rock

Mystical evil fate also haunts the famous painting by Ilya Repin “The Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan" This painting became the largest discovery of the late 19th century. and is recognized as a masterpiece of world painting. It was called the most optimistic and cheerful work of Russian painting. Critics wrote: this canvas contains all types of human laughter - from loud laughter to a restrained smile. The work caused a sensation international exhibitions in Chicago, Budapest, Munich, Stockholm. The painting is still kept in St. Petersburg state museum. Repin himself considered it perfect and said: “You can neither remove nor add a stroke on this canvas...”

At one time the picture amazed and Russian Emperor Alexandra III. He did not hesitate to pay 35 thousand rubles for it. This was an unheard of amount at that time. But then everything turned upside down: the painting was suddenly called cursed. What happened to her?

Repin worked on the masterpiece for more than 13 years. The prototypes of the main characters of the picture were... the artist’s friends. If only they knew how this would turn out for them! Thus, the head of Kiev, Mikhail Dragomirov, who posed in the image of the chieftain Sirko, turned from a sweet, cheerful person into a binge drunkard and domestic tyrant. After a quarrel with him, two of his sons committed suicide, and his only daughter went crazy.
A brilliant scientist and philanthropist Vasily Tarnovsky (in Repin's painting - a gloomy Cossack with a donkey) went bankrupt and ended his days in a shelter for beggars. Another hero of the picture, a smiling clerk in glasses, the famous historian Dmitry Yavornitsky, was declared politically unreliable and spent several years in exile in Tashkent. After a series of these misfortunes, the frightened Repin hastily removed from the canvas the figurine of a little Cossack woman, which he painted from his own son...

By the way, Repin finished the portraits of the surgeon Pirogov and the composer Mussorgsky literally the day before their death. And Russian Prime Minister Stolypin was shot the day after the artist finished working on his portrait. Premature death also befell 8 other models of the artist.

Portrait of Pirogov

Portrait of Mussorgsky

What was it - an accident or an evil fate that dominated Repin? Alas, the answer to this question remains unanswered.

Prepared by Oleg Lobanov,

This story is notable for the fact that the number of eyewitnesses and witnesses amounted to hundreds of people. It got the name “Crying Boy” after one of the paintings Spanish artist Bruno Amadio (1911-1981), also known as Giovanni Bragolin.

At one time, he painted a whole series of paintings, each of which depicted a crying child. Knowledgeable people they said that these were the faces of children from orphanage, which burned down during the war.
Bragolin's creations were liked by art connoisseurs. There were 65 paintings. Reproductions were made from them and sold all over the world. With the money raised, the artist was able to live peacefully in Venice, and images of crying children ended up in the houses and apartments of thousands of people. And everything would have been fine, but in the summer of 1985 a strange incident occurred in Great Britain.


In the county of South Yorkshire, in the northern part of England, lived a respectable couple, Ron and May Halloey. At the beginning of June of that year, there was a fire in their house. Everything burned down, even the roof collapsed, leaving only the walls. And on one of them hung a completely intact and not even covered with soot reproduction of “The Crying Boy.” The family bought it back in 1972, while in Italy.


The family members were not heartbroken, since the property and contents were insured, but the very fact that the painting survived among the ashes was surprising. After some time, a number of fires occurred in the city of Rotherham. All of them were of great strength and mercilessly destroyed people's homes. What united them was that in all the houses and apartments there remained intact a picture depicting an unhappy boy with a face drenched in tears. Moreover, it was the same child, and the artist, as mentioned above, depicted 65 crying faces of boys and girls.


Firefighter Peter Hull noticed this strange pattern. His words were confirmed by another firefighter named Alan Wilkinson. This statement aroused the interest of journalists from The Sun newspaper, a tabloid with a daily circulation of 2 million 800 thousand copies.
Newspaper editor Kelvin McKenzie sensed the sensation and decided to more thoroughly study the issue related to reproductions of the paintings “The Crying Boy.” On his instructions, journalists visited several cities in Northern England and found out that similar fires had been observed for several months. They cause serious concern among insurance companies, as they regularly have to pay out huge sums of money to victims.

On all the ashes they find the same tear-stained face of a child. Reproductions with other persons do not pose any threat to people and their homes. From this the conclusion followed: the inhabitants of England were faced with an amazing mystical phenomenon.
On September 4, 1985 the next one was released morning edition"The Sun". The front page featured an article entitled “The Curse of the Crying Boy.” More than 7 million people read it in a day. And the next day, a flood of letters came to the editorial office, and the phones were ringing non-stop. People from different corners England were eager to tell their stories. They are all in different time purchased a print of “The Crying Boy” and was subsequently damaged by fire.


Thus, Doncaster resident Sandra Krasko said that she, her brother and mother suffered from a fire after they each purchased one copy of the ill-fated reproduction. In the city of Leeds, a house burned down completely, but a reproduction of a child remained safe and sound. Exactly the same messages came from other cities and counties. The fire destroyed everything to the ground, and the tear-stained face was not even covered with soot.
These facts led the British into a state of extreme excitement. The mass destruction of all reproductions of the crying boy began. True, there were many people who were quite skeptical about all this excitement. They believed that the newspaper men had found new way their enrichment and shamelessly pump money out of gullible citizens.
Those who burned the reproductions were seized with panic. There was a rumor that the spirit of the crying child would now take revenge. One Leeds woman said the painting was to blame for the deaths of her husband and two sons. And an elderly man from London said that his son and wife died due to the fault of reproduction.
In November 1985, the editors of The Sun decided to organize a mass demonstrative burning of the remaining images of the tear-stained baby.

The newspaper men wanted to build a huge fire right on the flat roof of the editorial office, but the firefighters categorically forbade this. Then they chose a vacant lot outside the city. There they made a huge fire. All remaining copies in it burned down.


England froze in anticipation of something bad. But days passed after days, weeks after weeks, and there were no more massive fires. The “Crying Boy,” having died in the fire, stopped bothering people and making their lives miserable. Over time, the unpleasant story was forgotten. Only old newspaper files remained, reminiscent of her.
Nikita Chepkin

Associated with many works of art Mystic stories and riddles. 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 happened to these fatal masterpieces amazing facts and inexplicable events - fires, deaths, 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 own as a sitter little son. But, since the baby could not cry on demand, the father deliberately brought him to tears by lighting matches in front of his face.

Do you like mysticism? Horror stories that make you shiver? Do you look around with apprehension when you hear stories about terrible crimes, strange objects, voices, sounds and other devilry that have come from out of nowhere? Do you feel uncomfortable in a dark room, especially if there is no one nearby? Then quickly take the hand of someone at home or, as a last resort, call your four-legged pet - a dog, cat or hamster - and read, read, read!

Mystical artist

Mikhail Bulgakov is called one of the most mystical writers of Russian literature last century. But Italian-born Bruno Amadio is a dramatic and sinister artist of the 20th century. His name is surrounded by rumors and legends, and most famous picture- “The Crying Boy” still causes a lot of speculation and controversy among specialists and ordinary people. Amadio's creative pseudonym is Giovanni Bragolin. He lived quite a long human life and creative life, leaving a number of interesting canvases depicting children. The painting “Crying Boy” belongs to the same series. More than 20 portraits, from which the eyes of little children, full of tears, anger, despair, melancholy and pain, look at the viewer, amaze with their vulnerability, touchingness and a completely non-childish doom. What did the artist want to say with them? He himself was more than once called the painter of the devil - for the eccentricity of his works.

"Children's" cycle

There are no interviews with him in the press, and there are practically no works of art history about his work. We know that he was a participant in World War II, then worked in Venice and was a restoration artist. The painting “The Crying Boy,” like the rest of the “Gypsy Cycle,” was painted by the author for tourists. The very idea of ​​the painting series came to the author’s mind under the impressions of those scenes of childhood suffering that he saw. The name of the cycle was given by critics, most likely, because the little sitters have a completely unkempt appearance: their faces are dirty, their hair is disheveled, their clothes are poor, torn, and unkempt. Although nothing gypsy - no external national signs - is noticeable in the children. Oddly enough, Amadi’s works were very popular. For example, the painting “The Crying Boy” in reproductions was sold out en masse in the 70s and 80s, especially among the middle and poor segments of the population. Dates of life of Giovanni Bragolin - 1911-1981.

Riddle one

As already mentioned, the attitude towards the canvas discussed in the article is quite ambiguous. In addition to the plot, what is unusual about the painting “The Crying Boy”? The history of its creation deserves special attention and research. The first mystery lies here, for there are several versions of how the portrait was painted. According to one, Bruno Amadio had a little son. And the painting “The Crying Boy,” history claims, conveys exactly this appearance. The child was quite nervous and timid. And he was especially afraid of fire - flames in the stove, a lit candle, and even matches. Bragolin worked in the realistic genre and tried to follow the truth of life as accurately as possible. Psychological detail was also extremely important for him. Therefore, as legends say, when the painting “The Crying Boy” by Giovanni Bragolin was painted, the artist specially lit matches in front of his son and brought them close to his face in order to naturally convey the horror in the children’s eyes, indignation and anger, and to evoke natural, truthful tears. No matter how unnatural the rumors sound, they are easy to believe. Remember the father of the great Amadeus Mozart! He also forced his son to play music 14-16 hours a day. You never know the stories about despot parents! So it may well be that the Spanish artist’s painting “The Crying Boy” is really a portrait of his unfortunate son, a victim of a cruel father.

Mystery with continuation

However, the legend continues. Rumors claim that in the end, the child, driven to despair, wished his father to burn along with the matches with which he was frightening him. Soon the child died from severe pneumonia. And a little later, a terrible fire broke out in the artist’s workshop. All the works located there burned down. And only the ill-fated portrait remained untouched. It was even rumored that the charred corpse of Amadio himself was found in the room. However, this is a clear exaggeration: it is known that in fact the artist died of esophageal cancer. But the painting “The Crying Boy,” the photo of which you see, really wasn’t particularly damaged. It was then that a rumor first arose that the canvas was possessed by the angry soul of a child, and he began to take revenge on the offenders.

Riddle two

The second version of how Amadio painted his “Boy” is this: in 1973, on one of the Venetian streets, he saw a little ragamuffin, an inhabitant of an orphanage (or a street child). Appearance the latter was so colorful that Bruno convinced him to pose for the picture. Very soon after finishing work, the boy died under the wheels of a car (according to other sources, the orphanage and its unfortunate inhabitants burned down). What happened next - you, of course, already guessed. The same fire in the painter's studio, the fire consumes everything except fatal portrait. This is how the legend about the painting “The Crying Boy” gained momentum. Reproductions from it and other works by Giovanni Bragolin under common name“Crying Children” gladly hosted various art galleries peace.

Mysticism or reality

In the mid-80s of the last century, England was gripped by panic. A series of fires swept across the country different properties. In some apartments there were short circuits in the electrical network, in others there were some other violations of safety precautions and the operation of household appliances. But the public would not have paid attention to these tragedies (after all, there were human casualties every time), if not for one “but”. Reproductions of Amadio’s works hung in all the burned rooms. The damned painting “The Crying Boy”, already known to you, was especially common. The townsfolk firmly decided: the baby, offended and angry at the whole world, is taking revenge on this soulless, cruel society. After all, at every ashes, amid the general collapse and devastation, only this picture remained safe and sound. Moreover, when, for the purpose of an experiment, journalists from one of the London newspapers (the publication drew the attention of readers to the oddities of the incidents in order to increase circulation) wanted to burn several copies of reproductions - the paper did not burn, and no one could explain this phenomenon. The only remark that the quality of the paper is high and therefore does not burn did not stand up to criticism. What’s also interesting: the victims were mostly poor families - for some reason, “The Crying Boy” and other works in the series were especially popular among precisely this group.

Eyes to eyes

We have already spent quite a lot of time on the history of the painting. We figured out why it is “cursed” and what mystical aura surrounds the canvas. The time has come to study the masterpiece itself. We note, however, that its original has not been found to this day. So, in the foreground of the painting by the artist Giovanni Bragolin we see a half-length portrait of a child about 4-5 years old. The first thing the viewer immediately notices is the boy’s eyes, wide open, looking straight at you, literally looking into your soul. It is difficult to determine their color - either gray or greenish. However, it is not the shade that is important, but their expression. Usually, when babies cry, they close their eyes. Here, on the contrary, large tears, like peas, roll from open eyes, looking somewhat from under their brows. The baby seems to understand: there is nothing to expect from getting rid of what upset, offended, or hurt him. And he cries from hopelessness. More precisely, the sobbing itself has already passed. In the picture we see the end of a spiritual storm. And, contemplating the boy’s unhappy face, we understand what his emotional experiences were originally.

Further description of the painting

But let's continue. The boy's face is round, with light eyebrows, plump cheeks and lips, sweet. Now it is roaring, swollen, but we understand how pleasant and cute a child can be in moments of good spirits. Alas, they are quite rare in babies. And the wet grooves on the cheeks, clearly visible drops of tears evoke in us sincere compassion, a desire to help, console, shelter the poor man from all everyday storms, caress, cheer. And not him alone. This painting awakens compassion for all children! And the famous one that comes to mind is that the world order that is built on even one child’s tear is criminal.

General impression

Despite the unhappy expression on his face, the hero of the picture is very likeable. He has thick fluffy blond hair with a slight reddish tint. They say about such people: “They were kissed by the sun.” The baby's hair is matted. Apparently, she had not been touched with a comb or comb for a long time. And the kind hand of an adult too. The child is wearing a brownish sweater and a blue-gray scarf is wrapped around his neck. The boy is depicted almost waist-length, but, apparently, he is wearing black trousers - we can only see the trousers with light buttons. The child's face and figure are illuminated unevenly - the left side is in semi-darkness. There is a dark background in the background - apparently, to give the picture a gloomy, tragic flavor. There really is something devilish and sinister about her.

It all probably started in September 1985, when spouses Ron and May Hull from Rotherham contacted the editors of the British newspaper The Sun. The British decided to tell journalists the story that happened to them. According to the couple, their house recently burned down for an unknown reason, but a reproduction of “The Crying Boy” remained on the black, charred wall, almost untouched by the fire. The brother of the head of the family worked as a fireman and not only confirmed this information, but also noticed that portraits with a red-haired child were also found intact in other burnt houses.

The publication's staff conducted their own investigation. It turned out that two months earlier one printing plant had printed more than fifty thousand reproductions of the canvas, which quickly sold out in the working-class northern regions of England. Journalists found out that during this time there were more than forty fires in the houses where this painting was hung, and each time the work turned out to be intact, as if the flames deliberately did not touch the portrait.

THE MYSTICAL PICTURE ITSELF DOES NOT BURN
The article published by The Sun turned out to be sensational. After reading it, many British people began to call the editor, claiming that they, too, had purchased this painting, and they also had fires. One man stated that he specifically bought a reproduction and tried to burn it in the fireplace, but the portrait, after lying there, a whole hour in the fire, not even slightly burned. The excitement around “The Crying Boy” was so great that representatives of the South Yorkshire Fire Department issued an official statement, explaining that there was supposedly no mysticism: they say that too many reproductions were printed, and statistically there is nothing unusual in the fact that paintings with a sullen child sometimes they find themselves in houses where fires occur.

The owners of The Sun also had to make a statement. The newspapers reported that they were tired of calls from readers, and agreed that everyone would send them their own copy of the picture. Within a week, the editorial office was overwhelmed with thousands of portraits of the “Crying Boy.” Editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who turned out to be a superstitious man, demanded that the paintings be destroyed as quickly as possible. Some time later the newspaper published new article, which stated that all copies of the canvas received were burned outside the city. However, many Britons did not believe it, including because the article did not include photographs of the mass burning of paintings.

Almost all fire officials also turned out to be superstitious, to whom they began to present the painting as a joke gift. People who claimed that there was no connection between the portrait and the fires completely refused such gifts. Some said that the painting would not suit their interior, others claimed that they did not like painting at all, and others did not even state the reasons for their refusal.