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.
The panic
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"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.
"Steve Punt
Amadio painted under the pseudonym Giovanni Bragolin. He claimed to have painted a foundling child. No record of the model was ever found.
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.