'The Starry Night' by Van Gogh was not the fruit of his imagination: the night was apotheosic

BarcelonaThe spectacular sky full of stars portrayed in The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh was not the result of a spontaneous fantasy, but rather the result of observing an exact celestial alignment. According to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, it took place minutes before dawn on July 22, 1889, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, near Avignon. The Dutch artist lived and worked in this town between May 1889 and May 1890.

Although Van Gogh exaggerated the shapes with his characteristic style, the astronomical and pictorial analysis agree perfectly: a crescent moon, Venus, and the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation of Taurus, were very close to each other when viewed from this French location. The painter captured them in one of the most famous paintings in the history of art. The coincidence is even greater in the pen drawing that Van Gogh made after painting the picture.

Until now, the date of the painting had been established based on a letter the Dutch painter wrote to his brother Theo around June 18, 1889. However, the waning moon of that period cannot explain the thin crescent moon that appears in the painting. Instead, it is plausible, according to this new study, that this sky occurred around July 22, when the Hyades were rising in the east next to Venus and the shape of the moon resembled the one reflected on the canvas. The first astronomical analyses date back to 1980, but the researchers had not reached irrefutable conclusions. July 22 had been ruled out because they believed this date coincided with one of Van Gogh's epileptic seizures. Now, after reviewing the letters, with references to summer cicadas, and the meteorological records of those days, they believe the attack must have occurred later, at the end of the month, when he had already painted the picture.

The new multidisciplinary work carried out by a space studies company and a South Korean university has cross-referenced the writer's letters with the climatic and terrain conditions of this French location. In Arles, where Van Gogh lived before Saint-Rémy, the team verified the painter's field of vision in Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888) with photographs taken in situ. And they did the same with The Starry Night: they located the place from which Van Gogh drew the landscape.