Edvard Munch himself vandalised ‘The Scream’, hidden message on the painting decoded

Norway’s National Museum has found that a tiny, barely visible to the naked eye sentence written with a pencil on Edvard Munch’s 1893 masterpiece 'The Scream' was penned by the Norwegian painter himself. The painting was photographed using an infrared camera, making the writing stand out from the background and thereby revealing a long-hidden message.

The painting that shows a figure cradling its face with its mouth open and supposedly screaming, has become an icon worldwide as an expression of human anxiety.

The phrase 'can only have been painted by a madman' was scribbled in the top left-hand corner of the painting. "The writing has always been visible to the naked eye, but it's been very difficult to interpret. Through a microscope, you can see that the pencil lines are physically on top of the paint and have been applied after the painting was finished," says Thierry Ford, paintings conservator at the National Museum.

(Picture Credit: Nasjonalmuseet/ Borre Hostland)

Speculation has ranged from it being an act of vandalism by an outraged viewer to something written by Munch himself. “The writing is without a doubt Munch’s own,” Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum, said in a statement, adding it was compared to the painter’s own scribbling in diaries and letters.

“The handwriting itself, as well as events that happened in 1895, when Munch showed the painting in Norway for the first time, all point in the same direction,” Guleng said. 

Guleng said the inscription was likely made “in 1895, when Munch exhibited the painting for the first time.” The painting at that time had caused conjecture about Munch’s mental state. “It is likely that Munch added the inscription in 1895, or shortly after, in response to the judgment on his work,” the statement further read.

"The inscription can be read as an ironic comment, but at the same time as an expression of the artist's vulnerability. Writing on the finished painting shows that creating for Munch was a continuous process," adds Guleng.

The confirmation that the inscription was made by the artist himself now allows for varied interpretations of Munch's creativity and his relationship to his own art. 'The Scream' is being prepared to be exhibited at the new National Museum of Norway that is due to open in Oslo in 2022.

(Picture, inputs from AP)