Once Upon a BlurbĮnter The Madman’s Gallery – the perfect gift book for any art lover. It’s important to use a trusted restorer, unless you’re looking for results like Ecce Homo. Currently only 42.5% is Leonardo’s work, 17.5% has been lost and 40% is the work of restorers. Restorations of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper have been undertaken since 1726. The restorers swear they didn’t erase any testicles. One of the funniest finds was an Italian fresco created in 1265.

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. Despite this, I don’t tend to really ‘get’ art. As someone whose stick figures don’t exactly resemble stick figures, I’m in awe of artists. I’m absolutely obsessed with everything bookish but my art literacy leaves a lot to be desired. ‘If I could say it in words,’ explained the twentieth-century American artist Edward Hopper, ‘there would be no reason to paint.’

Fun facts about edward brooke