Mystery of Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear has been solved
IT was believed painter Vincent van Gogh hacked off his ear in a fit of madness before handing it to a sex worker. Now the truth has been revealed.
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ONE of the art world’s most enduring mysteries was put to rest this week, when the unknown woman who received Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear was revealed to be a farmer’s daughter named Gabrielle Berlatier.
The revelation was contrary to the 130-year-old belief that the painter gave his bloody appendage to a prostitute named Rachel, during a fit of madness, The New York Post reported.
Experts said the recipient was actually Berlatier, who toiled as a maid in a house of ill repute in Arles to pay off her medical bills after being attacked by a rabid dog.
The Art Newspaper reported the identity of the woman, who was referred to in Bernadette Murphy’s new book, Van Gogh’s War: The True Story.
The newspaper said it tracked Berlatier’s name in the records of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where the 18-year-old had been treated for rabies after being bitten by a dog owned by the farm’s shepherd on January 8, 1888.
She was disfigured when her wound was cauterised with a red-hot iron, but her life was saved when she received a new anti-rabies vaccine in Paris.
“She had had a very nasty scar on her arm following the bite,” Murphy told The Telegraph in the UK. “Van Gogh was somebody who was very touched by people in difficulty. I feel that he wanted to give her this gift of flesh.”
Berlatier, who later married and lived a long life, kept her encounter with van Gogh a secret, The Art Newspaper reported.
Murphy wrote that she promised Berlatier’s descendants: “Until I am given permission by the family to reveal her surname, I will respect their wishes and keep it private.”
The new revelation comes shortly after a letter from van Gogh’s doctor, Felix Rey, revealed that the painter had cut off his entire ear on December 23, 1888, not just part of it.
Rey’s letter — which includes a sketch drawn in 1930 of where the ear was severed — will be included in an exhibition, “On The Verge of Insanity,” at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until September 25.
Curators will show how the artist was plagued by illness that left him “utterly confused and unable to work for days and sometimes weeks at a time,” The Telegraph reported.
Rey believed van Gogh suffered from a kind of epilepsy triggered in part by too much coffee and alcohol and too little food, the Mirror of the UK reported.
He prescribed the sedative bromide as a treatment and also recommended cinchona wine, which contained a quinine extract.
Van Gogh spent a year at the Saint Paul de Mausole psychiatric hospital in Saint Rémy. He died after shooting himself with a revolver in July 1890.
This story originally appeared in The New York Post.
Originally published as Mystery of Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear has been solved