The Scream (ca. 1910) through the Years: from Photographic Documentation to Digital Rejuvenation

Edvard Munch's The Scream (ca. 1910) captures the dramatic scene of a human shape overwhelmed by the vibrant sunset over the fjord, painted in oil and tempera on cardboard. Over time, the painting's appearance has inevitably changed, with previous studies highlighting the sensitivity of the yellow and dark red hues to moisture and light exposure. We utilized four color photographs from 1971, 1989, 1993, and 2003 to digitally reconstruct the painting's appearance for those years. The method proposed in this paper addresses the challenges of film degradation by using stable areas of the painting as reference points for advanced color correction. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in digitally rejuvenating The Scream offering a pluralistic glimpse into its potential past appearance.