Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” is one of the world’s most enduring paintings.
Its androgynous muse appears to be in some kind of agony and bold waves of color overwhelm the spectator. But what appears on the upper left corner of the masterpiece has intrigued the art world for decades. It reads, “Could only have been painted by a madman.”
There has been speculation that a vandal somehow inscribed the words on the 1893 painting, but the New York Times reported that curators at Norway’s National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design determined that the words were written by Munch himself.
Mai Britt Guleng, one of the curators, told the Times that he had been examining the inscription “letter by letter” and determined that it is “identical in every way to Munch’s handwriting.”
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“So there is no more doubt,” he said.