Maddening mystery of Munch’s The Scream solved

 

Edvard Munch’s first painted version of The Scream includes a faint inscription, circled, which has now been analysed by experts using infrared scans.  BORRE HOSTLAND/THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NORWAY

For a century the graffiti was thought to have been the scream of a critic offended by the “abnormality” of Edvard Munch’s art.

A conservation project on The Scream has, however, confirmed that Munch himself scrawled “can only have been painted by a madman” in pencil on his most famous painting.

Infrared scanning of the first painted version of the artwork has drawn a match between the tiny lettering and documents written by the Norwegian artist.  Source:  The Times