Images of Madness

Rogier van der Weyden: The Last Judgment (large size image here), 1446-52. From this livejournal treasure trove of historical engravings and prints depicting people who have totally lost it. (Thanks, Miss Calpernia!)

querent

I am haunted by the memory of my mind.

Gotta let that shit go.
danwarning

That fellow in the middle looks like Stephen Colbert to me
InsertFingerHere

Went to bed last night at midnight after working on a video edit for 10 hours, got up today at 4am to fly two hours to another city to shoot another video, got back 10pm to render the final output from the last one, and find in my inbox a “very small change” the client wants. 3 hours later, it’s just about rendered out. Still have another hour at least to encode to various web flavours. Then I’m up at 6:45am to fly to another weekend-long gig, back home Monday at 2am.

In short, I want someone to paint my picture right now and send it to this guy’s blog… I think I’ve got the right look.
Anonymous

This photo in particular is a little less madness and a little more blind panic — they’re sinners being condemned to hell, and they’ve just now realized where they’re headed.
RufusTheGreat

This reminds me of a trip I took through Italy. Every even slightly religious place you visited seemed to have some version of Judgement Day portrayed. By the end of the trip, whenever I saw a judgement day painting I had the same look of horror as those depicted in it. Coincidence or by design?
Lucifer

You call it “madness”, I call it a normal Friday night at the Alpha Phi sorority house.
Daemon

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” said Alice. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat. “We’re all mad here.”
DCMarkie

I always liked Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights for Renaissance weirdness.
Anonymous

so there’s no distinction between horror (o’ hell, in this case) and madness?
PauloButt

Madness, you say?
According to the new DSMV-V, madness looks like pretty much all of us.
bklynchris

Bravo PauloButt! But if this is what starkers looks like I guess that would be me sans birthday suit pretty much every waking moment!
Spynach

Here’s an image of madness from the inside out http://images.volkskrant.com/weblog/www/pub/mm/2007/04/1176717164.25341.jpg
JoshP

oh wait, combine netherlandish gothic painting w/ chompers.. I’m going to go pickle my frontal lobes listerine now.
jtegnell

In addition to linking to a larger version of one corner of one panel of that painting, you should have also linked to the whole thing:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Rogier_van_der_Weyden_001.jpg

There are probably better versions to be found, but I’m lazy.

Regarding everyone looking the same: I find that many many artists draw faces similarly. I have to assume this comes from the influence of having drawn their own portrait so many times as a study, and that the faces resemble the artist’s own. Take a look at any Rembrandt painting, for example.