Forensics find hidden gems from the Masters

Scene from the Andy Griffith Show circa 1962 with
the usual set design features in the background.

"The Angelus" by Jean-François Millet 1814-1875

The Andy Griffith Show, one of my childhood TV favorites featured Widower Sheriff Andy Taylor, and his son Opie, who live with Andy's Aunt Bee in Mayberry, North Carolina. With virtually no crimes to solve, most of Andy's time is spent philosophizing and calming down his cousin Deputy Barney Fife.  Often viewers like me, while watching the reruns, find it fascinating to focus on some of the minutiae in the background of these scenes looking for any hidden gems that the producers may have planted as practical jokes, inadvertent blunders, or subtle statements.   On several of the episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (TAGS) - a reproduction of Millet's "The Angelus" is visible in the background above the fireplace. "The Angelus" - initially sold in 1859 by Millet for under 1000 Francs, became one of the most famous and widely 

Jean-François Millet 1814-1875  

reproduced religious paintings in the early part of the 20th century.  Oddly, the next year after filming the above scene from "TAGS" surreal artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989) who had been strangely fixated on this classic painting, felt there was an exceptional amount of emotion shown by the farming couple in the painting.  So Dali in 1964 petitioned the Louvre to subject the 100-year-old painting to an x-ray examination solely based on his emotional feeling that perhaps an earlier version of the painting had more to do than a couple offering a prayer in the fields after a day of hard toil or gleaning potatoes.  Dali felt that the farmers may have been mourning a death. The Millet painting, now valued in the millions of Francs was examined under a radiographic x-ray procedure that determined that there had been an earlier version of the painting that the artist had revised and painted over.  Under the bushel basket seen in the version pictured above was an obvious small box or casket laying on the ground that the couple were focused on.