Munch described the moment in his own words: he was walking along a road at sunset with two friends when the sky turned blood red. He stopped, exhausted, leaning on a fence, and felt what he called an infinite scream passing through nature.

That is the twist most people miss. The figure isn't the one screaming. It's covering its ears against a scream that comes from the world itself — the sky, the fjord, the whole landscape vibrating in waves of colour.

There isn't just one Scream. Munch made several versions: two paintings, pastels and a lithograph, so the image could travel. A pastel version sold at auction in 2012 for around 120 million dollars, one of the highest prices ever paid for an artwork at the time.

People have proposed explanations for that vivid sky, from volcanic sunsets after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 to rare clouds over Oslo. Those are hypotheses, not facts. The painting itself makes a simpler claim: sometimes the world feels too loud, and this is what it looks like.