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