Van Gogh's Ear: A Somewhat Different Christmas Story

Michelangelo, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci - many great painters have depicted the Christmas story in pictures. As a result, there are numerous variations in museums worldwide. In the history of art, the Christmas motif is well established to such an extent that it has even been taken up without any direct Christian reference. For example, Paul Gauguin's painting "The Nativity. Te tamari no atua", for example, depicts the birth and at the same time exaggerates it with the applied title ("Child of God") and with pictorial elements such as cattle crouching in the background to create a nativity scene. He painted the picture in Tahiti in 1896. By then, however, perhaps Gauguin's most memorable Christmas had already taken place eight years earlier.

Gauguin spent Christmas Eve 1888 in Arles, where he lived and worked with Vincent van Gogh. What happened that evening is one of the most masterfully told anecdotes in art history. The standard version goes like this: Somebody finds a bleeding van Gogh. He had madly cut off his ear and given it to a prostitute as a Christmas present; at least that's what the police records and Gauguin, who was questioned about the matter, say. But maybe everything was completely different. According to their German book "Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence", Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildgans believe they can prove, with absolutely comprehensible evidence, that van Gogh's injury was caused by a sabre cut by Gauguin.

Regardless of what really happened, Christmas was over for both of them: van Gogh was hospitalised, and Gauguin set off straight for Paris. What remained was the myth of van Gogh's ear...