Michelangelo’s Great Secret

In 2012 it was discovered that every old painting, from the 3400 year-old frescoes on the walls of the Palace of Knossos to van Gogh’s Starry Night, contains a second story. Every one of them is packed with names, dates, texts, and drawings – clandestine clues that reveal the passions that burned in the souls of the artists that painted them: their beliefs, worries, fears and loves; their outrage at the scandalous crimes being committed around them; and the fearsome retribution they exacted when wronged. What art historians have talked about for the last five centuries is just the superficial image the patron of the art thought they were paying for, but this painting was just the cover story for the revelation of evil hidden beneath. Paintings secretly told the story no one else dared to tell, and that was most of it. What we have seen so far are but shadows on the wall, and as the truth now emerges, we find that everything we thought we knew about art was but a fairy tale. For more, visit