In June 1988, during his Bad Tour, Michael Jackson asked for something unusual. He wanted to visit the Louvre after it closed, alone with a small group, without crowds or press. The museum agreed. What happened during that private visit has been documented in accounts from staff members and in interviews with people who were present.

His first stop was the Venus de Milo. He stood in front of it for several minutes and then removed his sunglasses. People who knew him said he almost never removed his sunglasses in public. For the Venus de Milo, he took them off.

The work that affected him most was Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Antonio Canova, a marble sculpture of a young woman being brought back to life by an angel’s embrace. He described feeling vibrations from it. He had a copy made for Neverland.

He also spent significant time with the four Captive sculptures by Michelangelo, the so-called Slaves, figures that seem to be struggling to emerge from the stone that contains them. He identified with the imagery explicitly, the idea of being trapped inside something from which you cannot free yourself.

His relationship with the Mona Lisa was more complicated. Before the visit he had commissioned a painter to create a version of the Mona Lisa wearing his signature white glove, as a kind of personal response to the painting. When he stood in front of the real thing, accounts suggest the experience was less transcendent than he had expected.

The painting that inspired the visual language of You Are Not Alone was Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni, a young man illuminated against a dark background, vulnerable and exposed. The connection between that image and the lighting of the music video is visible once you know to look for it.