Fewer than expected.

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It took quite a bit of searching (and more than I really had time for, but that's why these columns get written late into the night) to learn that the classic crying boy was painted by an Italian artist named Bruno Amadio, apparently also known as Bragolin. I identify this particular painting as the classic crying boy, but Amadio apparently specialized in crying children, and numerous versions are available.

Though lots of kitsch lovers have web sites, surprisingly little about Amadio can be found on the web. One good site that includes a bit on Bragolin is here. There is a Crying Boy Fan Club which is just the sort of thing I'd like to find, but the site is entirely in Dutch and the promised English site hasn't yet appeared.

In the 1980s the crying boy was the subject of a popular urban legend about houses containing the painting that burned down. Discussions of the issue can be found here and here.

I expected to find much more on the web dealing with the Crying Boy than I did. A generation ago in Israel it seemed that there was hardly a household in the country that didn't have a copy of the painting on a wall, and I assumed that this was a worldwide phenomenon. It may well be that it's more prevalent in Europe than in the States and that because of that web pages that deal with the painting are less common than I expected.

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Go to: Somebody has surely done this already, or
Go to: Maybe I'm really Monet, or
Go to: "Cook me up 300 words on internet dating", or
Go to: Mother Night on the web.