-Odd details hidden in masterpieces-
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Great works of art contain touches of strangeness that, once seen, unlock deeper meaning.
杰出的艺术作品中总包含着怪诞的细节，一旦留意到它们，就能领略作品更深层的内涵。
What do the greatest paintings and sculptures in cultural history have in common? Why some works continue to vibrate in popular imagination century after century, while the vast majority of artistic creations slip our consciousness almost as quickly as we encounter them?
文化史上最杰出的绘画、雕塑作品的共同之处是什么？为什么有些作品历经多个世纪仍令人浮想联翩，而绝大多数艺术创作却只不过是过眼云烟？
From Girl with a Pearl Earring to Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus , from The Scream to Edvard Munch’s The Kiss，each is hardwired with an underappreciated, indeed often overlooked, detail that ignites its meaning from deep inside.
从《戴珍珠耳环的少女》到桑德罗·波提切利的《维纳斯的诞生》，从《呐喊》到古斯塔夫·克里姆特的《吻》，每一件杰作都隐含着一些常为我们所忽略、未得到充分欣赏的细节，而这些细节往往能够激发作品的深层含义。
What follows is a brief digest of some of the more extraordinary details – touches of strangeness that invigorate, often subliminally, many of the most recognisable images in art history.
以下包含一些对这些极致细节的简要汇编——这些奇怪的点缀往往在潜移默化中，让许多艺术作品更具辨识度，焕发活力。
少女真的戴着珍珠耳环吗?
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665)
约翰内斯·维米尔，《戴珍珠耳环的少女》（1665年）
Think you see a pearl dangling lustrously in Vermeer’s famous portrait of a girl endlessly turning towards or away from us? Think again. The swollen bauble around which the painting’s mystery spins is just a pigment of your imagination.
在维米尔这幅著名的肖像画中，你是否看到了一位始终回避观画者的少女——耳垂下悬挂着那颗光泽夺目的珍珠？再细细想想。实际上，那颗珍珠是你用想象画上去的。
With a flick of the wrist and two deft dabs of white paint, the artist has tricked the primary visual cortices of our brains’ occipital lobes into magicking a pearl from the thinnest of air. Squint as tight as you wish and there is no loop that links the ornament to her ear. Its very sphericity is a hoax. We’ve willed the earring into weightless suspension from the puniest of white apostrophes. Vermeer’s precious gem is an opulent optical illusion, one that reflects back on our own illusory presence in the world.
画家轻弹手腕，娴熟地点涂上两笔白颜料，就轻而易举地骗过了我们大脑枕叶的初级视觉皮层，凭空变出了一颗珍珠。随你怎么眯眼仔细观察，珍珠耳环与少女的耳垂之间毫无装饰品连接，珍珠呈现出的球形就是一场骗局。是我们的主观想象，让寥寥几笔白颜料变成了悬空而挂的珍珠耳环。维米尔画笔下的珍贵宝石是一场华丽的视觉错觉，它反映了我们自身在世界上的虚幻存在。
维纳斯右肩的那缕金发是“奇妙的螺旋”？
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (1482-1485)
桑德罗·波提切利 ，《维纳斯的诞生》（1482年-1485年）
A wind-spun spiral of golden hair suspended on the goddess’s right shoulder in Sandro Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus whirs like a miniature motor on the vertical axis of the painting, propelling it forward into our imagination. A perfect logarithmic curl, this is no incidental ornament or accident of brushwork. The same spinning vector, observable in the plunge of raptor birds and the twist of nautilus shells, has hypnotised thinkers since antiquity.
在桑德罗·波提切利的文艺复兴时期杰作《维纳斯的诞生》中，一缕漩涡状的金发搭在维纳斯的右肩，从画面纵轴看，这缕金发像是微型马达一般，旋转着冲击着观众的想象。这条完美的对数曲线状卷发，不是偶然的装饰或是意外的笔触，而是与猛禽的俯冲路径以及鹦鹉螺壳的螺旋相呼应，自古以来众多思想家为之着迷。
In the 17th Century, a Swiss mathematician, Jacob Bernoulli, would eventually christen the curl spira mirabilis, or “marvellous spiral”. In Botticelli’s painting – a work that celebrates timeless elegance – the inscrutable spiral whispers into Venus’s right ear, divulging to her the very secrets of truth and beauty.
17世纪，瑞士数学家雅各布·贝尔努利最终将其命名为spira mirabilis，即“奇妙的螺旋”。在波提切利这幅颂扬优雅永不过时的作品中，这缕难以捉摸的螺旋在维纳斯的右耳中低语，透露着真与美的秘密。
《呐喊》的哀嚎形象灵感轮廓恰似灯泡？
Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)
爱德华·蒙克，《呐喊》（1893年）
It has long been assumed that the howling figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream – an archetype of angst that still flickers above the popular imagination more than a century after it was created – was indebted chiefly to the aghast expression frozen on the face of a Peruvian mummy that the artist encountered at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. But Munch was an artist concerned more about the future than the past, and especially anxious about the pace of technology.
长期以来，人们一直认为爱德华·蒙克《呐喊》中嚎叫形象的灵感，来源于这位艺术家在1889年巴黎世界博览会上遇到的一具秘鲁木乃伊脸上的惊恐表情——这种惊惧情绪的典型具现，在问世一个多世纪后，仍超乎大众的想象。然而比起历史，蒙克更关注未来，尤其是科技的发展速度。
Surely he would have been even more deeply impressed by the breath-taking spectacle of an enormous lightbulb filled with 20,000 smaller bulbs that stood on a pedestal and towered over the pavilion in the same Exposition? A tribute to the ideas of Thomas Edison, the sculpture rose like a crystalline god heralding a new idolatry, flipping a switch in Munch’s mind. The contours of The Scream’s yowling face reflect with extraordinary precision the drooping jaw and bulbous cranium of Edison’s terrifying electric totem.
在同一届世博会上，一个向爱迪生思想致敬的作品——耸立在展馆上方，一个巨大的装满了两万个小灯泡的灯泡雕塑。这一令人惊叹的景象很可能令蒙克印象深刻。这座雕塑像一位晶莹剔透的神，从世博会展厅里升起，预示着新的偶像崇拜，可能激发了蒙克脑海中的新思想。《呐喊》中那张哀嚎的脸部轮廓，精确地反映了爱迪生那令人惊叹的电图腾——下巴低垂，头颅圆鼓。
克里姆特的《吻》中藏着奇怪图案？
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907)
古斯塔夫·克里姆特，《吻》（1907年）
Surely love and passion stand at the furthest extreme from the long white lab coats and microscopic slides of scientific testing. Not according to Gustav Klimt’s painting The Kiss. The year he painted his work, Vienna was alive with the language of platelets and blood cells, especially around the University of Vienna where Klimt himself had, years earlier, been invited to create paintings based on medical themes.
爱与激情，长白大褂与科学实验的显微玻片，这两者无疑代表着两个极端。而在古斯塔夫·克里姆特的《吻》中则不然。在他作画的那一年，诸如血小板和血细胞的词语在维也纳不绝于耳，尤其是在维也纳大学附近。几年前，古斯塔夫·克里姆特曾受邀在那里创作医学主题的画作。
Look closer at the curious patterns that throb on the woman’s frock in Klimt’s painting and one suddenly sees them for what they are: Petri dishes pulsing with cells as if the artist has offered us a scan of her soul. The Kiss is Klimt’s luminous biopsy of eternal love.
仔细观察克里姆特的画作，画中的女子连衣裙上跃动的奇怪图案的真实面目是：在培养皿中跳动的细胞，仿佛画家在向我们展示这个女人的灵魂扫描图。《吻》是克里姆特为永恒之爱制作的明亮活检。
原文链接：
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190103-eight-odd-details-hidden-in-masterpieces
编译 | 林衍辰 李亚珂
排版 | 旦增卓嘎
