This Painting Held A Chilling Secret

pictures are funny things sometimes the small details lurking in the background of a frame say more than the subjects at the front take this simple scene from the andy griffith show one of the most iconic american television programs from the 20th century the main character andy taylor sits in his house playing out this particular episode's storyline but look for just a moment at the set dressing a large stone fireplace fills up most of the frame giving the location a cozy rustic feel this backdrop is one of the many familiar staples of the show this particular moment being from the first season notice the stag's head mounted over the mantel the shelf of books the small picture frame in the center all of these deliberately chosen by the crew to give the sense of a lived-in rural mayberry home but why this set dressing somebody decided which books to use which picture to hang is the buck's head meant to tell us that andy is an avid hunter the books probably chosen to convey that he's at least a little studied then again did the crew just grab some random stuff from the props house and throw it on the wall after all it's not that uncommon to find knickknacks from one show popping up in another especially if both productions happen to share the same sound stage still though it's fun to speculate over the course of the show's run the decoration changes in subtle ways by season 2 the books in the corner have been removed eventually gone is the deer and the small picture frame is replaced by a large painting and that painting well that tells a story too you can get a better look at it in season 5 episode 4 the education of ernest t bass it's a reproduction of the angelus by 19th century french artist jean francois malay best known for his oil paintings of peasant farmers and general life in rural france which contributed heavily to the realism movement these paintings came straight from malay's childhood the first son of a poor french family he would labor with his father in the field until he was old enough to be sent to art school he married in 1841 but lost his wife to consumption just three years later a decade after that he married again and he and his wife catherine would go on to have nine children now it's important to know that during his lifetime malay's work was not popular in fact a painting of his in 1848 was so harshly panned by art critics when it was released that he had the painting destroyed and back then when you trashed a painting you were trashing years of hard work he ended up painting over it to reuse the canvas when he struggled to afford and find art supplies during france's war of 1870. the sharp judgment sent malay into a creative crisis and it was only after he switched his focus and channeled his childhood on the farm that his paintings found their footing again maybe all it took was just finally painting what he knew but from 1850 to 1859 malay crafted an iconic trio that over the years have become known as his masterpieces though which should be noted were widely panned by his contemporaries when originally exhibited the art world was shocked by his heroic depiction of peasants the life of farmers was considered degrading at that time and while painting landscapes was widely accepted the idea of emphasizing a lowly field worker as the painting's focal point was scandalous but it was what malay knew commoners bathed in golden light as they worked tirelessly to make ends meet first came the sower then the gleaners and finally the angelus a painting which depicts two peasants in a field a man and a woman heads bowed in prayer over a basket of potatoes in the distance is a church steeple and the faint details of a small village in the roman catholic communities of the time church bells would sound three times each day for the angelus a prayer of deliverance as with most paintings the meaning has been subject to a wide array of interpretations from the political to the religious for his part malay claimed to have no ulterior motives simply painting it from a sense of nostalgia some long kept memory of his childhood on the farm malay who lived most of his life in poverty originally sold this painting for barely 1 000 francs fifteen years after his death it would auction for close to a hundred and fifty thousand today it's worth millions and yet pictures are funny things sometimes the small details lurking in the background say more than the subjects at the front a century later surrealist artist salvador dali looked at the angelus and sensed something beneath the surface a lifelong fan of malay's work he couldn't shake the feeling as a child that the angelus wasn't a picture of two field workers praying over potatoes at the end of the day instead he saw a husband and wife burying a child not an image of hard work but one of parents in mourning so at his request the louvre had the painting x-rayed in 1963 and sure enough hidden under the basket of potatoes beneath layers and layers of paint was the outline of a child's coffin maybe malay changed the subject matter at the last minute so the painting would be more sellable maybe it was a memory he couldn't quite bring himself to fully recreate the truth is we don't know and perhaps we aren't meant to the original vision or not prince of the angelus found their way into religious households all over france and eventually the world even it seems in the little make-believe town of mayberry a year after the painting's hidden secret was finally discovered during the education of ernest t bass jean-francois malays the angelus finally had its close-up yeah she's a sweet pretty girl and a lot of us like her [Music] she is your sweetheart ain't she special thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this video the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful website got an idea you're unsure how to get off the ground start by choosing from one of their stunning templates and then customize the design to your specific needs if you want to start 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Channel: AustinMcConnell

Views: 943,857

Keywords: austinmcconnnell, austin mcconnell, austin mcconnel, austinmcconnel, andy griffith, painting

Id: hLfrZPT5N1c

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 21 2022