according to a 2017 study conducted by the american psychological association the average
museum goer will regard a painting generally considered a masterpiece for 27 seconds though
the median amount of time a person studied one is about 17 seconds that might seem like evidence the
social media and mobile devices have ruined our attention spans but it's actually only a second
shorter than a 2001 study so at least it seems that it's a fairly slow process with that in mind
it makes sense that even with millions of people giving them a look in person for years decades
or even centuries little surprises flourishers or even jokes can be overlooked while in plain
sight some have amounted to little more than fun surprises others recontextualize the entire
piece so join us today on our 10 piece perusal of our humble gallery of all time masterpieces
10. earthly delights hieronymus bosch was a dutch 15th century pioneer can combining naturalistic
style with surreal subject matter while many of his surviving 35 paintings and eight drawings are
piously religious in nature it is the bewildering animal hybrids and other tableaus he imagined to
portray uncanny demons for his triptych such as the temptation of saint anthony in the last
judgment that are likely to first come to mind when discussing his work with so many bizarre
sights such as floppy-eared birds delivering mail and a pair of ears with a knife extending from
them no one could be blamed for missing a fairly crude element of the garden of earthly delights
on the bottom of a person partially hidden by a cloth bosch painted what turned out to be
actual performable music for a demon character we know that it's actual performable music because
a musician on tumblr who went by the username emilia transcribed and recorded a track of the
music that means that since both the notes and the subject actually playing them are visible bosch
may be the only renaissance painter with a piece possessing a canonical soundtrack and it happens
to be mostly known as butt music 9. sistine fresco there have been past top 10's videos
devoted to the many ways that painting the sistine chapel was a years-long ordeal for michelangelo
instead of something he regarded as a passion or a triumph to a point where
he included a portrait of the skinned saint bartholomew that doubled as his cameo but
even that wasn't the strongest expression of michelangelo's displeasure with the whole
project and his patrons as reported by abc news when michelangelo was dragged back to work on an
expansion of the chapel by the new pope julius ii he decided to hide an employer review as it were
specifically in the section called the last judgment he had a party a childish angelic
figure widely mistakenly called a cherub before a hand gesture called the fig at the prophet
zakarias who michelangelo gave julius ii's face others have noted that the opening to petition was
painted near where the pope would be seated this apparently was not common knowledge during
michelangelo's time as he got future commissions from the catholic church or pope julius ii was
just a much better sport than his nickname el papa terrible would suggest number eight mural
jackson pollock's work was so singular that it's as much a punchline these days as it is
admired by some people even the later revelation that his popularity was to a degree literally
directly funded by the cia and the fact that he killed himself and a young lady through
drunk driving has not lowered the profile of his abstract work this is especially true of mural
even though it seems we may have all been very wrong about this painting since pollock unveiled
it in 1943. it turned out his signature work was much more literally a signature piece than anyone
had expected the discovery was made in 2009 by the anonymous wife of art historian henry adams that
seemingly just one more collection of splotches of paint buried under other paint was a rough
curse of approximation of pollock's own johnny hancock now obviously people don't paint letters
eight feet high and 13 feet wide the same way that they sign on the dotted line making the choice all
the more interesting goodness knows what this means might be hiding in other pollock pieces
7. persistence of memory for people with only a passing interest in art this 1931 self-portrait
is probably the only salvador dali painting that they've ever seen so wait you might ask
that painting known mostly for the melting clocks is a self-portrait is he reflected in one of the
melted faces do the clocks symbolize him well no he's actually that object on the ground that looks
like some kind of crumpled pelt along the bottom hem you can see his elongated nose extending his
eyes closed with his trademark moustache not in evidence as it would be a few years before he
began growing it and made a big public splash with it on the cover of time magazine in 1936.
it's certainly not the usual shape or angle we see faces from so no shame to anyone who missed it for
years despite the content of the painting being fairly sparse probably now you've seen it you'll
never be able to unsee it number six old man in military costume in these days of global supply
chains providing abundance we can lose track of how material shortages affected the artwork
back in the day so it was that even during one of the most robust periods of his career
that rembrandt had to reuse whole canvases his 1630-1631 piece accounts vary which is
generally interpreted to have been a tribute to dutch perseverance against its spanish adversaries
was discovered to have been one such example in 1968. during a study that included x-raying all
of rembrandt's paintings that could be done so practically it was discovered there was an image
of a fresh-faced young man under the canvas but x-ray technology of the time didn't give a very
clear picture in 2015 the los angeles times reported that new macro x-ray fluorescence
gave details that allowed for a much more accurate reproduction of the image which it turns out was
turned upside down by remrant before he did this bit of 17th century recycling so far
no word on whether the getty museum which owns the canvas intends to list it as a two-for-one
sale 5. guernica pablo picasso's 1937 piece on the aerial bombardment of the town of guernica a show
of power by francisco franco's fascist government and the ascending third reich is so rich with
symbols that despite its large size the pioneer of cubism managed to hide something in there that it
took decades for even the dedicated professionals to find it doesn't help that for many people the
hidden symbol is a bit problematic the very cubist figure of a woman in a side profile with both eyes
still on one side of her head holding a kerosene lantern has been found a figure that symbolizes
the union of soviet socialist republics the giveaway was the five-pointed object near her head
where the hand would be for balance which has been pointed out to be a combination of the soviet star
and the hammer and sickle the ussr support of the spanish republic was much more than
merely symbolic as they would provide nearly 1 500 aircraft and 900 tanks among other arms
it was also quite reasonable as that of hitler's mayan comfort already made it perfectly clear to
the world that the soviet union would be in its crosshairs for liebenstrom before long
no matter what non-aggression pacts were signed for his part picasso was a passionate proponent
of the soviet union communism in general and stalin in particular even through 1956 when
premier khrushchev's speech denounced the former late secretary-general number four
olive trees completed by vincent van gogh in september 1889 when he was an asylum patient
the olive trees was a series of tributes that he painted of a grove during the time when he was
allowed off the grounds of the institution what went unnoticed until 2017 was that the painting
was in a sense a piece of accidental mixed media that van gogh had indulged in by that has meant
that the impression of a grasshopper leg was left in the canvas as conservator mary schaefer found
out when going over the painting with a magnifier she also found at least a blade of grass and
other bits of debris as van gogh had rendered the pieces outside this would have been completely
unsurprising to vincent who lamented in a letter to his brother theo about how he must have picked
a good hundred flies off of four paintings that he worked on one painter who certainly can relate
to that feeling would be david lynch while he is much more famous for his filmmaking he has a
considerable body of paintings according to david hughes the complete lynch ever since an insect
flew into one of his wet canvases and smudged the paint in a way he found interesting he was a
proponent of the value of accidents in art if only he could have shared that attitude with van gogh
3. supper at a mouse caravaggio wasn't just a controversial painter of dark
blood and thunder depictions of scenes from the bible in the 16th and 17th centuries he was the
kind of man who would get in trouble with the law for throwing rocks at guards his papal connections
allowed him to get away with that sort of thing until having to flee rome in 1605 for killing a
pimp over a fight brought on by a tennis game four years before that crime caravaggio included what
may have been a little tribute to the need for secret lives in the early days of christianity
if you need a refresher on the book of luke the separate in mouse was when jesus christ met with
the apostle luke and his uncle cleopas after his resurrection then vanished into thin air for his
version of the scene caravanjo put a wicker fruit basket in the foreground as reported by the bbc
the partially undone weave in the fish shape used as a secret symbol between christians in the 2nd
century a.d when the religion was still banned in the roman empire as if to emphasize the point the
shadow of the fruit basket looked uncannily more like a fish's tail and a top fin than a pile of
fruit it might seem redundant to hide a christian symbol in an explicitly christian painting but as
columnist kelly grover postulated the purpose is more about the themes of identifying the
presence of holiness as the oblivious innkeeper is supposed to help illustrate by being oblivious
to the significance of christ's presence while his intimates are overwhelmed by it number two
the scream many people only know the expressionist eduard monk for his 1893 tribute to a panic attack
he had the year before when a particularly vivid sunset left the sky blood red it is
hardly a subtle work but apparently it was felt that the piece deserved additional explanation
in 1895 someone wrote can only have been made by a madman in the upper left-hand corner as monk's
painting was critically bashed at the time it was presumed that it was some disgruntled viewer who
defaced the piece that would go on to be for a time the most expensive painting in the world the
identity of the culprit wasn't determined until 2021 it turned out to be munk himself who wrote
it in a fit of peak this was determined through comparing notes on monk's activities that placed
him in the city of oslo when the vandalism took place he'd been recorded as being offended by
psychology student johann scharfenberg implying that he might be going insane so monk apparently
took the tentative diagnosis more as a bad review 1. mona lisa painted between 1503 and 1519 the
subject of leonardo da vinci's portrait has been inconclusively identified as league rodini it was
sent on its way to be the most famous painting in the world by being first stolen in 1911. then in
1919 marcel duchamp made a defaced parody of its postcard version those aren't the most dignified
reasons for a painting to become famous and they hint to how everyone can miss the symbols looking
them straight in the face the mona lisa's right pupil leonardo painted the letters lv in a left
pupil he painted ce and in the background he painted 149 with a fourth digit erased which
seemed very likely to have been a sign leonardo painter did in the decade before it's generally
supposed ironically researcher silvano vincetti claimed not to have discovered this in 2010
through his own analysis but to have been put on the trail by a book by another art historian
published in the 1960s so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please
do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching
you