This late 20th century print is a reproduction of a painting from Italian artist Bruno Amadio’s popular Crying Boys series. Amadio, who was popularly known as Giovanni Bragolin, produced paintings of tearful children for tourists visiting his hometown, Venice.

When his prints were mass produced and sold worldwide in the 1980s, the Crying Boy earned a sinister reputation after being associated with several house fires. In the United Kingdom, on 4th September 1985, the “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy“ was headlined by The Sun, the most popular tabloid newspaper in the English-speaking world at the time. The article described how a home in South Yorkshire was ravaged by fire. Despite the downstairs rooms of the house being badly damaged by the blaze, the homeowners’ Crying Boy print was untouched, and still hung in its frame on the wall.

As more fires linked to the Crying Boy prints were reported, rumours of a curse spread. It was claimed that the Crying Boys caused fires, often being the only item in a household to survive the flames. Frightened owners desperately sought to rid themselves of the Crying Boy. After a national extermination campaign led by The Sun, thousands of the prints went up in flames on 30th October 1985, on wasteland close to the River Thames. However, not all reproductions of the Crying Boys series were destroyed. Those which survived the purge are said to preserve the “Curse of the Crying Boy”, and provide a glimpse into the power of popular media in fueling the spread of paranormal belief — and hysteria.