Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me joshuam. For this week's select I've
Speaker 1: chosen our episode on art Mysteries. It's a great one.
Speaker 1: Chuck and I are secretly jazzed by art history, it
Speaker 1: turns out, and this episode is the best of any
Speaker 1: we've done on the subject. May also be the only
Speaker 1: one at any rate. It's a good episode, and I
Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 2: So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's here somewhere.
Speaker 1: So this is Stuff you should know, the Art World edition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, I just realized. We record these
Speaker 2: in two's and we just recorded the Pog's episode, right,
Speaker 2: And you didn't say welcome to the podcast. I didn't
Speaker 2: have missed opportunity for a great dad joke.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something I would skip though, even had
Speaker 1: I thought of it, or I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would have pulled.
Speaker 2: The trigger on I think or I could see you
Speaker 2: pulling the trigger and then making fun of yourself.
Speaker 1: Right, But I would have just been engaged in self
Speaker 1: loathing for the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Well retroactively, I'm gonna say, I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk about art mysteries.
Speaker 1: I love this one, man, this is great. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of a Stuff you Should Know episode from years back.
Speaker 1: For some reason.
Speaker 2: Well, it's because we don't do these top lists anymore.
Speaker 2: Are part of it, you know, very famously we used
Speaker 2: to have top tens on our old House Stuffworks website,
Speaker 2: of which usually there were maybe seven decent entries, so
Speaker 2: we never did I don't think we ever did a
Speaker 2: full ten on anything. Maybe somebody could probably correct this,
Speaker 2: but this one actually came in at seven. They didn't
Speaker 2: even try, and I don't even and we may do
Speaker 2: like five of these. We haven't even figured it out yet.
Speaker 1: We'll see. We're gonna play it fast and loose. I
Speaker 1: think that's another reason why it reminds me of an
Speaker 1: old Stuff you Should Know episode. Yeah, Fast and loose.
Speaker 1: First you got the fast, then you got the loose.
Speaker 2: But never furious because he wants to be mad. I
Speaker 2: don't know they should have called out series Fast and Loose.
Speaker 1: That I think I've heard it before that that series
Speaker 1: is the highest grossing movie franchise in the history of
Speaker 1: film like worldwide.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what's funny is at one point we
Speaker 2: were this is years ago, we were talking with Ludicrous
Speaker 2: about doing something with a network, and I, uh, because
Speaker 2: he's he's a local guy here in Atlanta. And I
Speaker 2: talked to our boss and said, what's he what's he
Speaker 2: doing these days? Like I haven't heard any music? And
Speaker 2: he went, he makes fast and furious movies, Like that's
Speaker 2: his job now, yeah, because he's just getting rich off
Speaker 2: of making these movies, like I can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: And plus also, I mean they're pretty it's pretty involved
Speaker 1: movie making. I would guess, like I'm sure because there's
Speaker 1: so many stars involved that, you know, the shooting schedule
Speaker 1: for each one isn't necessarily you know, a year long
Speaker 1: endeavor or anything like that, and they probably have it
Speaker 1: down to like a pretty fast science by now. But like,
Speaker 1: I would think that would eat up a pretty decent
Speaker 1: amount of your time shooting one of those films every
Speaker 1: few you know, a couple of times, well, I guess
Speaker 1: every few years.
Speaker 2: I only saw one of those.
Speaker 1: I think, Man, I'm slowly like degenerating into Bob Newhart. Man.
Speaker 2: Have you known man good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could degenerate into worse things than that. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like I've really I'm really hitting that new
Speaker 1: Heart note these days.
Speaker 2: I've noticed that's a great note. I love it. I've
Speaker 2: always wanted Bob Newhart as my podcasting partner.
Speaker 1: So well, you've you've there, you go, You've got it.
Speaker 2: All right, number one on the list. You want to
Speaker 2: talk a little uh cut of Asio.
Speaker 1: So Caravaggio is my new favorite painter. Oh yeah, not
Speaker 1: just because he was a scummy lowlife swordsman from the murderer.
Speaker 1: He was a gambler, He had weapons charges against him
Speaker 1: while he was alive. He was not a good guy
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. Very troubled person is
Speaker 1: a really polite way to put it. But if you
Speaker 1: look at his art, like I had no idea, I've
Speaker 1: seen like so many works of his art and I
Speaker 1: never pieced together that they were the same person. And
Speaker 1: then when I really started to read some criticism of
Speaker 1: his work, I'm like, oh my god, this guy he's
Speaker 1: considered one of the fathers of modern art, and this
Speaker 1: guy was painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: the early sixteen hundreds, and just like POGs, he burned
Speaker 1: hot and bright and fast and furious.
Speaker 2: Actually sadly, Oh, that's right, that wasn't even forced. Nice work,
Speaker 2: Bob so. Michelangelo Marisi de Caravaggio was an Italian Baroque painter.
Speaker 2: He at one point in sixteen oh six killed a
Speaker 2: man name Ramuccio Tomasani and said, I got to get
Speaker 2: out of here because I'm in big trouble now, and
Speaker 2: went to went away from Rome and fled to Malta,
Speaker 2: where he had a pretty brief but I guess, notable stay.
Speaker 2: He was only there about six months and kind of
Speaker 2: hiding out and quickly hooked up with the Knights of
Speaker 2: Malta and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta,
Speaker 2: like for a month. Yeah, and painted one of his
Speaker 2: most famous paintings there, the oil on canvas twelve feet
Speaker 2: by seventeen feet, the Beheading of John the Baptist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an altarpiece for the Order of Saint John,
Speaker 1: also known as the Knights of Malta. They were going
Speaker 1: to again put this behind the altar in their church
Speaker 1: on Malta, and it was actually his little entry fee.
Speaker 1: They charged an entry fee usually money to their initiates.
Speaker 1: But they accepted, Yeah, but they accepted this altars giant
Speaker 1: painting of Saint John the Baptist being beheaded, and it
Speaker 1: was actually, I mean, as far as the Caravaggio goes,
Speaker 1: especially toward the end of his life, it's actually fairly
Speaker 1: tame because there's not you know, like jets of blood
Speaker 1: spurting out. It's a pool of blood that's being shown.
Speaker 1: He paints some really violent stuff and like you said
Speaker 1: that that kind of that. He was a master of
Speaker 1: light and shadow. It's called kira scuro and he used
Speaker 1: it to really dramatic effect, including in that painting, and
Speaker 1: in fact, one of the other paintings that you might
Speaker 1: have seen of his chuck it's called Judith beheading Holofernes.
Speaker 1: Have you seen it?
Speaker 2: I have so.
Speaker 1: Judith, the woman who's in that painting, the woman who
Speaker 1: modeled for that for Judith, that was the woman that
Speaker 1: he killed. Bernuccio TOMASONI over.
Speaker 2: Right, did you know that I did?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Well? At anyway, they really in this House of Works
Speaker 2: article they called it a petty squabble and that that
Speaker 2: really doesn't tell the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another explanation I saw was that it was over
Speaker 1: a tennis wager. And this is real tennis, not lawn tennis,
Speaker 1: and real tennis is kind of like this kooky mix
Speaker 1: between squash and racquetball and tennis, and it's all indoors
Speaker 1: and there's like horse sheds basically involved that you can
Speaker 1: play off the roofs of It's really interesting stuff. And
Speaker 1: he used to play that a lot too. But so
Speaker 1: it was either over a wager or it was over
Speaker 1: this woman.
Speaker 2: Her name was what was it, Judith.
Speaker 1: No Felidae Fellide I believe was the actual woman's name
Speaker 1: who modeled for Judith. So he ends up on Malta,
Speaker 1: he becomes a knight, and when he becomes this night
Speaker 1: he paints his altarpiece and he signs his name in
Speaker 1: the pool of blood, which you're like, well, he's an artist.
Speaker 1: That seems like something an artist would do, not Caravajio.
Speaker 1: This is actually the first and only work of his
Speaker 1: that he ever signed, which a lot of people are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, let's examine this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it kind of took a while for it
Speaker 2: to be even very visible because it underwent some restorations
Speaker 2: over the years and in the nineteen fifties they did
Speaker 2: a restoration where they really could see the signature and
Speaker 2: what it said I don't know about for the first time,
Speaker 2: but like super clearly at least, and it said F period, god,
Speaker 2: F mitche lang m I, C H E, l A
Speaker 2: n G. And then you know, of course, everyone it's like, well,
Speaker 2: what does this mean because there is no F in
Speaker 2: his name. It's not like his initial. Is he saying,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, screw Michelangelo, myself, screw me, or I'm screwed. No,
Speaker 2: no one really said that. They thought the F. They
Speaker 2: are a couple of different theories. Thought it was shorthand
Speaker 2: for fratter or which means brother because he was one
Speaker 2: of the knights, and maybe he just meant like brother
Speaker 2: Michelangelo or whatever. And then some other people said, no,
Speaker 2: maybe it means stands for fesset fecit, which is Latin
Speaker 2: for did, translating basically into I did it, and it's
Speaker 2: spelled out in blood, kind of confessing to his crime.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's kind of like where the mystery comes in.
Speaker 1: Was he confessing to the crime of murdering Renuccio Tomusoni?
Speaker 1: From what I saw, most I can't say most, but
Speaker 1: the art historians and critics that I saw basically said no,
Speaker 1: he almost certainly wasn't doing that. For one, everybody knew
Speaker 1: that he did it. He'd already been convicted in absentia,
Speaker 1: so it's not like he was confessing to it. Although
Speaker 1: you can make the case that he was confessing in
Speaker 1: the Catholic sense of the word, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like before God, yeah, exactly, or de Bear's That painting
Speaker 2: still hangs at Saint John's co Cathedral in multitude.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, well, I mean it was the altar piece,
Speaker 1: like they like, it was a big deal that they
Speaker 1: got their hands on it, because he was a celebrated
Speaker 1: painter at the time, already in his lifetime. But the
Speaker 1: other interpretation that he was saying f as in Freighter
Speaker 1: or Brother Michelangelo about himself, that's probably the likelier version
Speaker 1: because he was at the time seeking a pardon from
Speaker 1: the Pope so he could return to Rome, and by
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm in this holy order, I'm basically like
Speaker 1: a Catholic holy man now a leader of the church,
Speaker 1: because the Order of Saint John, the Knights of Malta
Speaker 1: of inducted me. He was basically shouting it loud and
Speaker 1: proud by signing that one particular very holy painting that
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: But they said, nice, try, buddy, and they kicked him
Speaker 2: out for being a quote foul and rotten member end quote.
Speaker 2: So it didn't work.
Speaker 1: A month after a month, dude, he lasted a month
Speaker 1: in the Order of Saint John. And it's not like
Speaker 1: they ran around willy nilly inducting people like. They basically
Speaker 1: had no idea that they had. What was Vic's last
Speaker 1: name in The Shield, victay Beck, No, not victay Back.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I didn't watch The Shield, Oh.
Speaker 1: You didn't know. It was good. I rewatched like the
Speaker 1: last seven episodes the other night, over a couple of nights.
Speaker 1: It still holds up actually, But anyway, they didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they had inducted him, the guy from the Shield,
Speaker 1: and they figured it out pretty quickly. So he made
Speaker 1: his way back from Malta to I believe sicily on
Speaker 1: his way to Rome, and I think he actually got
Speaker 1: a harden and got into yet another squabble, another sword fight,
Speaker 1: and sustained some wounds and between infected wounds, they think
Speaker 1: he got a staff infection lead poisoning. He apparently had
Speaker 1: gone rather mad from being exposed to the paints that
Speaker 1: he painted with and then sun exposure sunstroke on the
Speaker 1: beach in Tuscan. He finally killed him, and so it goes, Yes,
Speaker 1: it does. But his paintings are still just amazing. I
Speaker 1: can look at him all day, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. I like this. I like this stuff.
Speaker 1: I do too. So that's a Caravaggio. How about Vermire, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a break. Oh gosh, and
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this. All right, we had
Speaker 1: a great cliffhanger with Vermire. Vermire, the very famous Dutch
Speaker 1: artist Johannes Vermire, had a very famous painting, a lot
Speaker 1: of very famous paintings, but one in particular that has
Speaker 1: had a bunch of names over the years. In fact,
Speaker 1: it did not get the name Girl with a Pearl
Speaker 1: ear Ring until the twentieth century. It was called everything
Speaker 1: from a Girl with a turban to Girl with an Earring,
Speaker 1: had lots of different names because it was not officially
Speaker 1: titled by Vermir nor dated, even though they think it
Speaker 1: was around sixteen sixty five. Yeah, he was just like
Speaker 1: this dude who lived in Delft in the Netherlands and
Speaker 1: never left his hometown and had a wife in fifteen
Speaker 1: kids fifteen yeah, fifteen kids, and it just kind of painted.
Speaker 1: And he made probably a comparatively small number of works.
Speaker 1: I think around third six are attributed to him, and
Speaker 1: there's a theory that as many as a fifth of
Speaker 1: those were done by his oldest daughter Maria. But he's
Speaker 1: kind of like this enigma at the time, not just personally,
Speaker 1: but also the stuff he was painting. There was a
Speaker 1: huge movement among the Dutch painters at the time that
Speaker 1: they would paint like these, you know, horrific hellscapes or
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like obvious narrative and symbolism
Speaker 1: just all over the paintings. There was just a lot
Speaker 1: going on. Vermire went a different way where he would
Speaker 1: almost peek in on very normal daily life and capture
Speaker 1: like these these really just kind of boring or otherwise
Speaker 1: mundane moments. But he did it in a way that
Speaker 1: that this guy was like the master of light. He
Speaker 1: makes he makes Thomas Kinkaid look like puke as far
Speaker 1: as like you know, light mastery.
Speaker 2: So girl with a pearl earring. Everyone has seen it,
Speaker 2: Like I said, it's very famous it's a young girl
Speaker 2: looks to be sort of like mid teenage years, looking
Speaker 2: over her shoulder. She's wearing a dress. She's wearing that turban.
Speaker 2: Very prominent ear rings, large pearl earrings, and pearls factored
Speaker 2: into quite a few of his works over the years.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those paintings where the eyes follow
Speaker 2: you supposedly, which we've talked about in one of our
Speaker 2: short stuff episodes.
Speaker 1: On Mona Lisa.
Speaker 2: I think, so, yeah, it's, you know, the effect of
Speaker 2: the eyes following, which doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes.
Speaker 1: Oh no, the Mona Lisa's eyes actually don't follow you.
Speaker 1: I think that was the big reveal of that one,
Speaker 1: was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? All right, So he paints his painting, and then,
Speaker 2: of course the mystery of this one is who is
Speaker 2: this person. There has been speculation that it might be
Speaker 2: a mistress. A lot of people think it was his
Speaker 2: daughter Maria, who would have been about fifteen or sixteen,
Speaker 2: and like you said, who some people believe painted about
Speaker 2: a fifth of the works attributed to him, because about
Speaker 2: a fifth of his collected works aren't. I mean this
Speaker 2: sounds mean to say, but they aren't as they aren't
Speaker 2: up to snuff compared to his other works, so they
Speaker 2: sort of stand out from the rest, so they think
Speaker 2: that they may have been Maria's good paintings.
Speaker 1: Still, yeah, there's still a lot better than anything I
Speaker 1: could say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like there were stick figures, you know,
Speaker 2: out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: They're like this, Vermere seems off.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you've there was a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine novel from Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring,
Speaker 2: and then the two thousand film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson,
Speaker 2: who was perfectly cast. She looks, you know, quite a
Speaker 2: bit like The Girl with a Pearl ear Ring. But
Speaker 2: this was historical fiction. If you've seen that movie and
Speaker 2: you're like, no, she was the family's maid's assistant and
Speaker 2: love interest to Vermire, that was just I don't even
Speaker 2: think that was based on anything. It's just historical fiction.
Speaker 1: Yes, from what I've seen, the art critics and historians
Speaker 1: basically tend to think that there was no person that
Speaker 1: this was modeled on.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even necessarily his daughter. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a trend at the time, a painting called
Speaker 1: a trony, which was an imaginary figure, a person who
Speaker 1: didn't actually exist, and the point was to kind of
Speaker 1: show off things like costumes and jewelry, which is ostensibly
Speaker 1: the point of that painting. But the thing is the vermire,
Speaker 1: the face that he did and the place that he
Speaker 1: put her. Like we were talking about how she gets
Speaker 1: compared to Mona Lisa. She's called the Mona Lisa of
Speaker 1: the North. Mona Lisa is like sitting back in the painting.
Speaker 1: The girl with the pearl earring is like right in
Speaker 1: the foreground, like right, there's very little between you and her,
Speaker 1: and she's turned around and her mouth so open, which
Speaker 1: apparently was very unusual for painting Dutch painting at the time,
Speaker 1: and it looks like she's going to say something. I
Speaker 1: guess that is what entrances people with this, this image
Speaker 1: that you know, what's she going to say? What did
Speaker 1: he capture her about to say? You know, it looks
Speaker 1: like she's turning around like, oh, and you know this
Speaker 1: other thing I hadn't told.
Speaker 2: You maybe she was an improv comedian. And she was, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: you never know, but this is a mystery that'll never
Speaker 2: be solved, which sometimes I like those kind of mysteries
Speaker 2: when it comes to stuff like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I saw that argued as well that it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, if we knew who she was,
Speaker 1: it would just it would we would lose a lot
Speaker 1: of the interest in.
Speaker 2: It, and we would have found out by now.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, yeah, and you're right, we probably won't
Speaker 1: ever know. But because of this so like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like very well thought of, or nobody really thought much
Speaker 1: of it until nineteen ninety five in the National Gallery
Speaker 1: used it as the poster for their big exhibit. But
Speaker 1: since then a lot of people have really kind of
Speaker 1: examined it. And I hadn't noticed this before, but I
Speaker 1: saw it, pointed out Chuck. If you look at the
Speaker 1: pearl earring, first of all, it's improbably large, is how
Speaker 1: I saw it described, like that the ear couldn't physically
Speaker 1: hold up a pearl that size. But then secondly, it's
Speaker 1: really basically made with two brushstrokes. Both of them are
Speaker 1: reflecting light. One is from the light source and then
Speaker 1: the lower one is reflecting the light off of the caller.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty amazing that, you know, we talk about
Speaker 1: this the girl with the pearl earing, and this pearl
Speaker 1: itself is is like a kind of a cultural icon too.
Speaker 1: And it's basically just two brushstrokes, which is kind of
Speaker 1: goes to show how great Vermir was.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen Tim's Vermure the documentary? I have not, Oh, Chuck,
Speaker 1: You've got to see it. It's directed by Teller from
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller, which makes you think, like, how did
Speaker 1: he direct if he doesn't talk, you know, but he
Speaker 1: somehow did. I think it's about what that's just a
Speaker 1: bit and it's about It's about a guy who basically
Speaker 1: figured out that Vermire somehow projected images that he built
Speaker 1: in real life onto a canvas and then painted him
Speaker 1: that way, and he actually replicates a Vermir like perfectly.
Speaker 1: It's really just one of the better documentaries you'll ever see.
Speaker 2: Very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what do you think?
Speaker 2: On to rafae yel, Yeah, so the mystery here and
Speaker 2: this is one of our This actually has a Simpsons
Speaker 2: crossover as well, which is kind of fun because Raphael
Speaker 2: painted a very famous painting called Portrait of a young
Speaker 2: Man and is largely described as one of the most famous,
Speaker 2: if not the most famous, pieces of art to go
Speaker 2: missing during the plundering of great art in World War
Speaker 2: Two by Hitler in The Gang. And this is a
Speaker 2: crossover with the Simpsons in that in the Fighting Hellfish
Speaker 2: episode when Grandpa Abe and Burns are stealing art, this
Speaker 2: is one of the paintings Portrait of a young Man. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's one of the paintings that they stole. Wow, which
Speaker 2: shows that you know Simpsons writers back then at least,
Speaker 2: we're definitely doing their work, like their research work. Because
Speaker 2: that's a nice little easter egg.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, totally. Doesn't it even talk? Doesn't it
Speaker 1: say something like someone's guilty conscience or something. I don't
Speaker 1: remember making that up.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't remember. I mean, it's been
Speaker 2: a long time since I've seen that one. But it
Speaker 2: was one of the great episodes, I think.
Speaker 1: So the Portrait of the young Man, which they think
Speaker 1: was a Raphael self portrait, and actually we have no
Speaker 1: idea what the colors were because the only photographs we
Speaker 1: have of it were in black and white. But he
Speaker 1: used to hang in the Prince's zar Torski Museum in Poland,
Speaker 1: along with two other really important paintings, Leonardo's Lady with
Speaker 1: an Ermine, which is a scout stoat. I can't remember
Speaker 1: kind of a weasel like animal and then Remembrant's landscape
Speaker 1: with the Good Samaritan, and all three of those and
Speaker 1: everything else, and the princes Are Museum were swiped by
Speaker 1: the Nazis when they came to Poland and placed in
Speaker 1: the office of a guy named Hans Frank, who was
Speaker 1: the head of the government for the Nazis in Poland.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and you know, they almost they almost got
Speaker 2: these hidden away successfully when Poland was being invaded. They
Speaker 2: knew that the art was going to be plundered, and
Speaker 2: so those three paintings were actually rescued by the prince
Speaker 2: and hidden away in a house in a place that
Speaker 2: I can't even pronounce, Sienawa. I'm not sure what that is.
Speaker 2: But they were ultimately found by the Gestapo and handed
Speaker 2: over to Frank and Frank you know, they were supposed
Speaker 2: to go to Hitler. Hitler was going to open a museum,
Speaker 2: the Furia Museum, and Lenz and Frank actually kind of
Speaker 2: kept it for a little while, hung it in his residence,
Speaker 2: and then eventually this thing went to Germany and then
Speaker 2: Austria for a little while, and then back with Frank
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: Which seems crazy probable that they would end up back
Speaker 1: with him, but they did. And the Allies came in
Speaker 1: to Poland, I guess, and arrested Hans Frank in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, and they were able to find the lady
Speaker 1: with an ermine and the landscape with the Good Samaritan,
Speaker 1: but the portrait of the young Man was nowhere to
Speaker 1: be found, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of other stuff too.
Speaker 1: Sure, they definitely did, but the three most important pieces
Speaker 1: in the Prince's Zartarski Museum were those three, and two
Speaker 1: were recovered, one wasn't. And it's very odd to think
Speaker 1: that they were separated at any time, or that it's
Speaker 1: even odder to think that two were kept together, but
Speaker 1: one wasn't. And so because the portrait of the young
Speaker 1: Man was not recovered, and it's a Raphael who's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, it's considered maybe
Speaker 1: the most important piece to go missing in World War two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they, you know, along with I think over
Speaker 2: eight hundred other artifacts they got from him, and they
Speaker 2: could not go on to question him very long because
Speaker 2: he was executed just a year later. And since then
Speaker 2: there have been a lot of rumors about where this
Speaker 2: thing ended up. Who has it a lot of speculation
Speaker 2: that maybe a private collector in another country has it.
Speaker 2: I think in twenty twelve there was a false report
Speaker 2: that it was supposedly in some bank vault, and they
Speaker 2: really don't know. It's just sort of one of those
Speaker 2: great mysteries of a disappeared painting. And my money is
Speaker 2: on a private collector probably has this thing stashed away.
Speaker 2: But you would also think that at some point somebody
Speaker 2: would talk.
Speaker 1: You would think so, and you know, maybe they will eventually.
Speaker 2: Unless it's really stashed.
Speaker 1: Well, some people think it was destroyed. And that movie
Speaker 1: monuments Men, right, they show the Nazis igniting it with
Speaker 1: the flamethrower in a cave with a bunch of other art,
Speaker 1: and you know there's a whole camp that says, now
Speaker 1: this thing is It's gone forever. So they did something
Speaker 1: to it because the Nazis were known not just plunder
Speaker 1: but also destroyed as well, which just one more reason
Speaker 1: to love them Nazis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this is oil on panels, so
Speaker 2: it's I don't think this could even be like rolled
Speaker 2: up in a tube and put under your bed or anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would guess not. No, I didn't realize it
Speaker 1: was on panel, but that makes sense. But the the state,
Speaker 1: the National Museum in Krakow, bought the entire Princess zark
Speaker 1: Torsky collection from a private collector for one hundred million
Speaker 1: euros back in twenty sixteen, and that I know, and
Speaker 1: that included the rights to portrait of a young man
Speaker 1: in case it's ever found. And for now it's just
Speaker 1: they have the original frame hanging empty in the in
Speaker 1: the gallery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Turns out that's a thing I didn't
Speaker 2: know as a thing in frames in galleries. It's kind
Speaker 2: of sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sad. It's very poignant. It says, come home,
Speaker 1: come home. We're leaving the light on for you, come home,
Speaker 1: just like Motel six. That's right right, Tom Broke call,
Speaker 1: we'll leave the light out for it.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, that means it's time for another break
Speaker 2: and we'll be back right after this to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about Van goch.
Speaker 1: So Chuck. Before I launched into soaka go away type
Speaker 1: tirade onto you? Is that how you accurately pronounce his name?
Speaker 2: I don't know it. It was from the filmmaker who
Speaker 2: dare not speak his name. It was from a Woody
Speaker 2: Allen movie. I think it was in the most problematic
Speaker 2: movie Manhattan, when he's with Diane Keaton and some obnoxious
Speaker 2: person says Van or I think it's Diane Keaton, says
Speaker 2: Van Gough, and he's you know, he's incense. He's like
Speaker 2: Van Gock, Like how pretentious?
Speaker 1: So okay, So instead we're just gonna go with Van
Speaker 1: go like everybody else, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, okay, And we can cut all that out
Speaker 2: if we want to. Don't you want to talk about
Speaker 2: Widdy Allen? That's fine, sure, sure, I hear you.
Speaker 1: So Van Goh was most he was just such a sad,
Speaker 1: tragic figure out for this guy so much after learning
Speaker 1: more about him, we should do an entire podcast on him,
Speaker 1: if you ask me, I agreed. But instead here we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about his death because there is a
Speaker 1: mystery surrounding his death. He's very famous for having cut
Speaker 1: off his ear. He definitely did that, and I had
Speaker 1: always learned that he did it to impress a sex
Speaker 1: worker who he was enamored with, and he definitely did
Speaker 1: give her his ear after he cut it off. But
Speaker 1: that's not why he cut it off. He cut it
Speaker 1: off in a fit of angst, basically after having an
Speaker 1: argument with his friend Paul Gogan, who he was living
Speaker 1: with in Arles in the south of France, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make some sort of lemonade out of
Speaker 1: this lemon I just gave myself and he took it
Speaker 1: to his I guess a hopeful girlfriend, and I believe
Speaker 1: she was not that impressed with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he suffered from definitely depression. There is speculation
Speaker 2: that he had bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that too.
Speaker 2: Was you know, just sort of long suffering as an artist.
Speaker 2: He only sold one painting before he died in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety at the age of thirty seven. And the story
Speaker 2: goes is that he shot himself in the chest with
Speaker 2: a revolver. But it gets a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 2: And in what year was the book? In twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: there was a book written called Van go Colon the
Speaker 2: Life written by Stephen I'm gonna say, Maifa okay and
Speaker 2: Gregory white Smith, and it seems like they sort of
Speaker 2: launched this idea, or at least really put it in
Speaker 2: the public forefront that he was actually killed almost certainly
Speaker 2: accidentally by one of two boys, younger gentleman that he
Speaker 2: was hanging out with that day.
Speaker 1: Right, So here's the thing, Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence that supports that theory that he was killed
Speaker 1: by two boys. There's also it's also circumstantially plausible that,
Speaker 1: you know, Van God died by suicide as well. But
Speaker 1: even if you take his story and start digging into
Speaker 1: it and the statements that he made supposedly made, apparently
Speaker 1: everything we know about it comes from the owner of
Speaker 1: the inn where he rented a room's thirteen year old
Speaker 1: daughter at the time was a witness to all this.
Speaker 1: But even if you take what he supposedly said, it
Speaker 1: still doesn't add up that number one, he shot himself
Speaker 1: in the chest, and most importantly the number two, the
Speaker 1: gun that he shot himself with could never be found
Speaker 1: and instead of actually, you know, finishing the suicide, completing
Speaker 1: the suicide, he couldn't find the gun after he shot
Speaker 1: himself in the chest and just walked back to his
Speaker 1: room where he died after suffering twenty more hours, but
Speaker 1: still to the end claiming that he had done this himself.
Speaker 1: Even if you take all that together, it seems like, no,
Speaker 1: this there's something really fishy going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this bullet misses all of his internal organs,
Speaker 2: very improbably because it deflected off his rib cage and
Speaker 2: he walked, like you said, to the doctor who they
Speaker 2: didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't remove
Speaker 2: the bullet. He lived a total of thirty hours after
Speaker 2: the shot and died of infection. Got to talk with
Speaker 2: his brother, you know, was speaking to people, so he
Speaker 2: had every opportunity to say that these two boys that
Speaker 2: I was hanging out with that I was drinking, and
Speaker 2: I say boys, I think they were maybe lateeen's, early twenties. No,
Speaker 2: there were sixteen, Oh okay, I saw early twenties and
Speaker 2: another thing. Oh yeah, but you know, hanging out getting
Speaker 2: drunk with them. One of these boys, Renee Sacratan, had
Speaker 2: a gun that apparently misfired a lot, and he liked
Speaker 2: playing with this thing. He liked to play cowboys, supposedly
Speaker 2: he did. And so it all just seems and even
Speaker 2: his statement, he he said he didn't say I shot myself.
Speaker 2: He said, do not accuse anyone. It was I who
Speaker 2: wanted to kill myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is very well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's ambiguous, I think as far as like because
Speaker 2: the idea is that maybe he was accidentally shot, and
Speaker 2: then after he was shot, he was like, this is
Speaker 2: kind of what I wanted all along, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been heading down this road towards suicide and then now
Speaker 2: it's just done for me.
Speaker 1: So what seems to have happened is that this gun
Speaker 1: possibly that it wasn't actually murdered or any kind of
Speaker 1: premeditated murder, more like a manslaughter where Renee and his
Speaker 1: brother guests Dollan were messing around and accidentally Basically he
Speaker 1: had seen a wild Bill Cody Wild West show the
Speaker 1: year before and became obsessed with it, so that's what
Speaker 1: he was doing with a gun and playing cowboy, and
Speaker 1: that they had accidentally shot him with this gun that
Speaker 1: was kind of, you know, known to misfire. So the
Speaker 1: thing was that the gun was never found. Renee went
Speaker 1: back to school like right after that, which was still
Speaker 1: in the middle of summer break from what I saw,
Speaker 1: and the town seems to have circled the wagons around
Speaker 1: this this these boys, because you know, Van Goh was
Speaker 1: an outsider. He was not very well thought of. He
Speaker 1: used to get really drunk and argue with the locals
Speaker 1: in the cafe and the and everything, like basically every night.
Speaker 1: And these boys came from like a good well to
Speaker 1: do family. So for many years like that was just
Speaker 1: the thing, like like it just happened. And then slowly,
Speaker 1: little by little it seems to have trickled out some
Speaker 1: support for this idea. Like no, like Vano wasn't anywhere
Speaker 1: near this field. He said that he had shot himself
Speaker 1: in he was actually on the road to the Secraton's house.
Speaker 1: And then finally years later, Renee's Secraton said that, you know,
Speaker 1: he it probably was his gun and that Vango had
Speaker 1: somehow gotten a hold of it. It seems it seems
Speaker 1: likely that he was shot by them, whether accident or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And these two authors, they put forth some other
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence, like that the bullet went in at a
Speaker 2: weird angle that would not have been the angle if
Speaker 2: you shot yourself in the chest, that his more recent
Speaker 2: works were a little more upbeat and a little more positive,
Speaker 2: and that he was not in that kind of mindset
Speaker 2: at the time, and that he had had recently even
Speaker 2: written his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was
Speaker 2: sinful and immoral, and so they sort of use all
Speaker 2: this as evidence that he would not have done it
Speaker 2: himself and that it was you know, they believe it
Speaker 2: was an accident. His last words, very sad, where the
Speaker 2: sadness will last forever, he spoke to his brother, which
Speaker 2: that's tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. I really do want to do an
Speaker 1: episode on him.
Speaker 2: And I think Sekhatan came out in the fifties even
Speaker 2: and denied it, right, like finally he once and for
Speaker 2: all he did.
Speaker 1: He did, but he also he also said that it
Speaker 1: probably was his gun and that somehow van Go had gotten.
Speaker 2: It right, but hey, that ain't my fault.
Speaker 1: No, but to also to back pedal and be like,
Speaker 1: it probably was my gun, because that was another thing,
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, where did Vango get a gun? Van
Speaker 1: Go didn't have a gun, no, And no one would
Speaker 1: have given Vang a gutten ye right, he was the
Speaker 1: guy who got drunk every night and had cut off
Speaker 1: his ear before that was like they no one in
Speaker 1: town would have given him a gun. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that he even admitted that it was his gun
Speaker 1: is probably as close as Renee Serkatan ever came to
Speaker 1: confessing publicly about it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes sense what he said was do
Speaker 2: not accuse anyone like that. Really seems like he's trying
Speaker 2: to cover for these kids that he didn't want to
Speaker 2: get in trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if he wanted to die, but it was
Speaker 1: also he didn't want to die by his own hand.
Speaker 1: Like this is kind of a lucky gift in a
Speaker 1: very strange way.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I'm going to that immersive van go
Speaker 2: thing in July.
Speaker 1: Where is that?
Speaker 2: It is at here in Atlanta. It's at the Pullman Yards.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, over in Kirkwood where they're shoot Like every
Speaker 2: movie in Atlanta shoots there, right, Yeah, So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's very very neat. Sounds neat, I mean like basically
Speaker 1: they just make the stars come out whenever you come in,
Speaker 1: and I think, so, I think you sit in this
Speaker 1: yellow chair.
Speaker 2: I think that's the deal. I think you go in
Speaker 2: and you are surrounded by projected art in different ways
Speaker 2: from what I can get, that's all.
Speaker 1: I got to check that out, man, Thanks for telling
Speaker 1: me about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks kind of cool, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Chuck, you want to finish out talking about.
Speaker 2: Hitler don't you mean Hilter.
Speaker 1: Did you know there's Hilter. Oh my gosh, yes, in
Speaker 1: the headline, in.
Speaker 2: The headline, did Hilter really do these paintings? Do these paintings?
Speaker 2: Who wrote that? I feel bad? But like, did Hilter
Speaker 2: really do these paintings?
Speaker 1: That's great?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah he did them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hilter did these paintings. So we're talking not about
Speaker 1: Hilter but about Hitler, Adolf Hitler in particular, and as
Speaker 1: everybody knows, Hitler was a frustrated artist.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, people have made a lot of hay about
Speaker 1: how possibly the world would be a totally different place
Speaker 1: had he been accepted into the Vienna Academy of Arts.
Speaker 1: And he came well, I don't want to say he
Speaker 1: came close, but he made two different attempts in one
Speaker 1: year to be accepted, and they basically looked at his
Speaker 1: stuff and said, look, man, you you have the skill
Speaker 1: of a draftsman. Maybe you should go into archit texture like,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to be an artist. And that
Speaker 1: was a direct quote. But this was a huge deal
Speaker 1: for him. I think I read that in mind comf.
Speaker 1: I haven't read mine, comp but I read an article
Speaker 1: by somebody who read mine comp and said that he
Speaker 1: said it was like a bolt from the blue, and
Speaker 1: that you know, he was pursuing this dream that his
Speaker 1: father would like beat him out of. Like his father
Speaker 1: enrolled him in a technical school. He's like, no, son
Speaker 1: of mine's going to be an artist. He would beat
Speaker 1: him up whenever he brought he brought the idea up.
Speaker 1: And so finally, after his father died and then he
Speaker 1: nursed his mal ailing mother until she died, he got
Speaker 1: up the gumps and did like go enroll in art school.
Speaker 1: And apparently, he, being Hitler, who I guess had been
Speaker 1: fairly bonkers his whole life, just knew that he was
Speaker 1: destined to become an artist. So the idea that he
Speaker 1: was rebuffed not once but twice by this Vienna school.
Speaker 1: These people were like the the the guardians of what
Speaker 1: is art and what is not, and they were telling
Speaker 1: him what you got is not. That was a huge
Speaker 1: deal to him.
Speaker 2: It was a very big deal. And it's funny, it's
Speaker 2: just now occurring to me that there was sort of
Speaker 2: a similar thing with Manson's rejection as a musician. Yeah,
Speaker 2: by the music industry. I never really kind of really
Speaker 2: thought of that parallel. But in nineteen oh nine, Hitler
Speaker 2: is trapesing around Vienna and he is selling watercolors copied
Speaker 2: from postcards to tourists. So if you've ever traveled to Europe,
Speaker 2: he was one of those guys that was down by
Speaker 2: the river, the river bank van. Yeah, in a van,
Speaker 2: selling these and literally copied from postcards. So he did
Speaker 2: that for a little while, made a little bit of
Speaker 2: money because you know, if you look at his art,
Speaker 2: it's it's way better than I could do. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's okay. But yeah, like modern and it's hard to
Speaker 2: tell with modern art critics like how much goes into
Speaker 2: looking at a Hitler painting and reviewing it, Like it's
Speaker 2: really hard to kind of separate those things. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the general thought is that he had nothing exceptional about
Speaker 2: him at all. It was he was the kind of
Speaker 2: artists that would sell stuff down by the river to tourists.
Speaker 2: They were fine, he was capable, but they were copycat paintings.
Speaker 2: He was copying things. He had no point of view.
Speaker 2: He did this in nineteen thirteen as well in Munich,
Speaker 2: painting Munich city scapes and landscapes and selling them to
Speaker 2: tourists and then in nineteen fourteen got hauled in by
Speaker 2: the police of all things, for failing to register for
Speaker 2: the military.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then he went down and registered, and then
Speaker 1: they gave him a physical exam and he failed it.
Speaker 1: They said he was too weak to fire a weapon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they arrested him so that they could humiliate him, basically.
Speaker 1: And then when World War One came around, he enlisted
Speaker 1: and they say, need everybody we can get, come on in, and.
Speaker 2: He actually did, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Even Hilter. Hilter did this army thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So when he rose to power in Germany, one of
Speaker 1: the things he did was he had his works collected
Speaker 1: and destroyed. I'm not exactly sure what the thinking was
Speaker 1: behind that. I guess because he knew it wasn't very
Speaker 1: good and he needed to focus on his political career
Speaker 1: rather than his artistic career, or have everybody else focus
Speaker 1: on it. But to no avail, because I saw a
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six critic or a critic wrote in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six that his style was prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling,
Speaker 1: or spiritualism. Yeah, and this was before he I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: or spiritual imagination and this was before he had really
Speaker 1: become an obvious threat. This is nineteen thirty six, so
Speaker 1: even back then, even without hindsight, people thought his stuff
Speaker 1: wasn't very good. So, yeah, he had his stuff destroyed
Speaker 1: and that's he It was kind of a footnote for
Speaker 1: a very long time that he was an artist, and
Speaker 1: no one really cared after his death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this, and that was one of the
Speaker 2: major reasons that he was such an art plunderer during
Speaker 2: the war and stole as much art as he could
Speaker 2: from real famous artists and famous paintings because he had
Speaker 2: all this backstory as a failed artist, and it was interesting.
Speaker 2: I did see that like one of his major I mean,
Speaker 2: because he wasn't an utter failure at first. He had
Speaker 2: a backer early on. I think he was a Jewish Man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which was really interesting, and there was I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: it's there's a lot of speculation about what that all
Speaker 2: meant to him, and like people try and draw parallels,
Speaker 2: just like some of the paintings I saw, I mean,
Speaker 2: some of it feels like a stretch, definitely, like the
Speaker 2: you know, the cold the Cold Street of Munich, like
Speaker 2: were painted like clearly with a future cleansing in mind
Speaker 2: to make it look like this, and that's a stretch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of that stuff seems like a stretch, But you
Speaker 2: could definitely read into the backstory at least I think
Speaker 2: with some accuracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And even if like you can't necessarily suss out
Speaker 1: like the future from his paintings, you can make a
Speaker 1: pretty strong case that his artistic ambitions being utterly crushed, yeah,
Speaker 1: had some sort of driving force or impact on a
Speaker 1: psyche at the very least. Sure like that and his
Speaker 1: later political career and dictatorship did not exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can possibly make the case that
Speaker 1: they were just unrelated in any way.
Speaker 2: No. I think any sociopath you can look at their
Speaker 2: past and see the dots connected, you know. Yeah, So,
Speaker 2: like you said, there was this kind of just was
Speaker 2: the deal for a long time. And then in like
Speaker 2: anything else, like people wanting to get original Charles Manson
Speaker 2: music reels, in the early late nineties early two thousands,
Speaker 2: there was a market for Hitler's work. I think in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine a British auction house someone paid
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty grand for fifteen early sketches and watercolors,
Speaker 2: including a self portrait, and then in twenty fifteen, some
Speaker 2: unnamed investors paid four hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
Speaker 2: a set of watercolors. I think there were twelve or
Speaker 2: thirteen that survived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the problem is is because he didn't have a
Speaker 1: style of his own, that he was copying postcards, that
Speaker 1: he didn't have any formal training, and that he was
Speaker 1: he lacked like a lot of creativity or any creativity.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's really hard to say this is
Speaker 1: a Hitler and this is a fake, And there's been
Speaker 1: developed a really a really enormous market of fakes because
Speaker 1: anybody who's like a passingly good good artists in watercolors
Speaker 1: of street scapes and landscapes could drum up something and
Speaker 1: be like, this is a Hitler, and it would be
Speaker 1: really difficult to say yes it is, or no it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what kind of a garbage human do you have
Speaker 2: to be to think I'll do Hitler forgeries and try
Speaker 2: and sell them to garbage humans that want to collect them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not like these are even fetching like
Speaker 1: ten million dollars apiece. We're talking like you might get
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars for it for your your Hitler forgery.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable but totally believable.
Speaker 1: So that's the mystery of the Hitler paintings. Did he
Speaker 1: do this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did he do those paintings?
Speaker 1: You got anything else?
Speaker 2: I got nothing else. That was a good five. I
Speaker 2: think we have committed to doing a robust episode on
Speaker 2: the Gardener Museum heist because that's a good one and
Speaker 2: that was on this list and way underplayed for sure.
Speaker 1: So keep it near out for that, everybody. And since
Speaker 1: I said keep a near out for that, I think
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm gonna call this middle names because we had
Speaker 2: a little discussion in our John Mure episode about how
Speaker 2: Emily and I and our friends justin Melissa one night,
Speaker 2: we're going by our middle names as a joke, and
Speaker 2: I had the theory that you have no emotional connection
Speaker 2: to your middle name if you don't have a reaction
Speaker 2: when you hear it set out loud, and I just
Speaker 2: meant sort of the non dominant name. It didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: mean middle names because my brother goes by his middle name.
Speaker 2: Scott is his middle name, and some people do that.
Speaker 2: It's a thing and certainly Amy does. She said, I
Speaker 2: was listening to the show and at the end you
Speaker 2: were chatting about using middle names and how you don't
Speaker 2: have an emotional connection when you hear it. I have
Speaker 2: an interesting situation that everyone everyone in my family uses
Speaker 2: their middle names. So I've always been called Amy ever
Speaker 2: since I was born, but my first name is Helen.
Speaker 2: This causes an interesting situation at airports and doctor's appointments
Speaker 2: where they refer to me as Helen, and I always
Speaker 2: have to remember that they're talking to me. A big
Speaker 2: fan of the show kept me curious and my curious
Speaker 2: spirits satisfied over the last three or four years, and
Speaker 2: it's such a comfort knowing there's always another episode to
Speaker 2: listen to. Best wishes from the UK. They're always so
Speaker 2: nice and that is sure Amy, Helen Amy.
Speaker 1: Thanks Helen. Amy. Wolves call her Amy as is customary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we say Helen, She's like, who.
Speaker 1: Wow. I can't wait until they read my listener mail,
Speaker 1: says Amy. If you want to be like Amy and
Speaker 1: get in touch with us for whatever reason, you can
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio For
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