The Madman's Gallery: The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities From the History of Art

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Speaking with Smithsonian magazine in 2021, the author said, “Just taking this idea of strange books, it actually leads you around the world into different cultures. You realize everyone has their own form of curiosities, and that as a species, we’ve always been incredibly strange and weird, but also very funny and endlessly imaginative.” Discover an extraordinary, illustrated exhibition of the greatest curiosities from the global history of art Buy Obscure and forgotten treasures sit alongside famous masterpieces with secret stories to tell. Here are Doom paintings, screaming sculptures, magical manuscripts, impossible architecture, dog-headed saints, angel musketeers and the first portrait of a cannibal. Stolen art, outsider art, ghost art, revenge art, and art painted at the bottom of the sea take their place alongside scandalous art, forgeries and hoaxes, art of dreams and nightmares, and cryptic paintings yet to be decoded. Discover the remarkable Elizabethan portraits of men in flames, the mystery ofthe nude Mona Lisa, the gruesome ingredients of lost pigments, the werewolf legion of the Roman army, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he’s recognised as the patron saint of aeroplane passengers.

This book focuses on “the oddities, the forgotten, the freakish, all with stories that offer glimpses of the lives of their creators and their eras.” It includes fertility art, doom paintings, revenge art and some artists sneaking portraits of themselves in paintings. There’s a lot of religious inspired art. What that last book did for bibliophiles, this new, beautifully produced and elegantly written anthology does for art lovers ... The research that has gone into this is prodigious, but Brooke-Hitching loves storytelling even more than scholarship, and he has a gift for it.' - The Spectator

Summary

Obscure and forgotten treasures sit alongside famous masterpieces with secret stories to tell. Here are Doom paintings, screaming sculptures, magical manuscripts, impossible architecture, dog-headed saints, angel musketeers and the first portrait of a cannibal. Stolen art, outsider art, ghost art, revenge art, and art painted at the bottom of the sea take their place alongside scandalous art, forgeries and hoaxes, art of dreams and nightmares, and cryptic paintings yet to be decoded. Discover the remarkable Elizabethan portraits of men in flames, the mystery of the nude Mona Lisa, the gruesome ingredients of lost pigments, the werewolf legion of the Roman army, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he’s recognised as the patron saint of aeroplane passengers. Obscure and forgotten treasures sit alongside famous masterpieces with secret stories to tell. Here are Doom paintings, screaming sculptures, magical manuscripts, impossible architecture, dog-headed saints, angel musketeers and the first portrait of a cannibal. Stolen art, outsider art, ghost art, revenge art, and art painted at the bottom of the sea take their place alongside scandalous art, forgeries and hoaxes, art of dreams and nightmares, and cryptic paintings yet to be decoded. Discover the remarkable Elizabethan portraits of men in flames, the mystery of the nude Mona Lisa, the gruesome ingredients of lost pigments, the werewolf legion of the Roman army, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he's recognised as the patron saint of aeroplane passengers. From prehistoric cave art to portraits painted by artificial intelligence, The Madman's Gallery draws on a remarkable depth of research and variety of images to form a book that surprises at every turn, and ultimately serves to celebrate the endless power and creativity of human imagination.

An utterly joyous journey into the deepest eccentricities of the human mind… The most cheering, fascinating book I’ve read for ages' Guardian Compare to the work of Xavier Messerschmidt (late 18th), who took it upon himself to sculpt heads with the most horrific expressions on their faces. His sculptures are grimacing, leering, and mad. They are fabulously ugly, in a repelling and off-putting sort of way.Few will know of all the versions of The Mona Lisa, nude. For some reason, artists, including if not especially Da Vinci’s own students, found it necessary and irresistible to make nude versions the Master’s finest work. They are displayed in this book. Some of them are good enough to pass for his work. None of them rate anywhere near the real thing. From prehistoric cave art to portraits painted by artificial intelligence, The Madman’s Gallery draws on a remarkable depth of research and variety of images to form a book that surprises at every turn, and ultimately serves to celebrate the endless power and creativity of human imagination. It turns out this is not the first time Brooke-Hitching has done this. His previous book is a madman’s survey of bizarre books and manuscripts. This was apparently such as success, he has tried to replicate it in art. And clearly succeeded. This might be a new franchise. Lord knows culture has enough that is bizarre to keep him occupied. So keep an eye on him. It’s worth it. In the last years of his life, German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt created a series of busts depicting a wide range of emotions, from petulance (see The Vexed Man) to amusement ( An Intentional Wag) to shame ( A Hypocrite and a Slanderer). Cast in tin alloy or alabaster, the life-size Character Heads are striking to behold, their expressions as exaggerated as the titles bestowed upon them after their maker’s death in 1783: The Incapable Bassoonist, Just Rescued From Drowning, Afflicted With Constipation.