The Strangest Paintings in the National Gallery
In this video, museum guide Jessica tours the National Gallery in London to explore ten of its strangest, most unusual, and macabre artworks in chronological order. The journey spans from the 15th through the 20th century, starting with Fra Filippo Lippi’s Seven Saints, which curiously features St. Peter the Martyr chatting with a giant knife wedged in his skull. It continues with a 15th-century German portrait of a woman featuring a photorealistic fly on her headpiece, Giovanni di Paolo’s depiction of Saints Fabian and Sebastian alongside flagellating members of a plague-era religious order, and Piero di Cosimo’s enigmatic mythological scene featuring fingerprints in the paint. Moving into the 16th and 17th centuries, the tour highlights Quentin Massys’s The Ugly Duchess (which inspired John Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland illustration), Lucas Cranach the Elder’s moralizing Cupid Complaining to Venus, Bronzino’s bizarre and erotic An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (which inspired the Monty Python foot animation), Domenichino’s Apollo Killing the Cyclops featuring a real-life jester dwarf chained in the corner, and Salvator Rosa’s dark, HP Lovecraft–inspiring Witches at their Incantations. Finally, the tour concludes at the museum entrance with Boris Anrep’s 20th-century mosaic floor, which depicts famous real-life figures—such as Virginia Woolf, Greta Garbo, and Winston Churchill—as modern muses and virtues.
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