:INFO
The Crying Boy Paintings
In September 1985 The Sun newspaper ran a front page claiming that a series of mass produced prints depicting weeping children had been found unburned at multiple house fire scenes across Britain. A firefighter from Rotherham was quoted saying he had attended a dozen fires where the painting survived. The prints, reproductions of a painting by the Spanish artist Bruno Amadio, had sold in their millions across Europe through the 1950s and 1960s. The panic that followed was immediate.


:IMAGE

:JOURNEY
The panic
3 The article
5 The bonfire
4 Spread
3 Investigation
2 Reassessment
2 Legacy

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Steve Punt]
The varnish on these prints did make them more resistant to catching fire. The firefighter was probably telling the truth. The curse was the explanation people reached for first.


:NOTE.half
Amadio painted under the pseudonym Giovanni Bragolin. He claimed to have painted a foundling child. No record of the model was ever found.
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:NOTE.half
The prints were coated with a fire retardant varnish commonly used in mass production at the time. This is the most plausible reason for their survival at fire scenes.


:POLL
What made the paintings survive the fires?
A chemical property of the mass production process
Something attached to the subject or the painter
A pattern of survivorship bias the tabloids turned into a curse
Keep it open

:LINK
https://www.google.com/search?q=Crying+Boy+painting+curse+1985+UK
Read more about the case