Vile Art: Humor and Horror in Masterpiece Paintings

This book is a new look at classic art that conquered the world. A provocative study of world painting in which Sofya Bagdasarova carries out a real investigation of the darkest stories, without cutting anything out. Cannibals, fetishists, and killers—turns out, they are the characters of masterpieces filling the halls of museums around the world. Stories we’ve heard so much about and know so little!

Why, in almost all museums, does the brutal Hercules so cowardly hide his courageous body in a woman’s dress?

By what deception did the famous Theseus actually manage to escape from the labyrinth of the Minotaur?

Which of Zeus’s exploits, widely known to the public, have been immortalized in paintings?