{"id":961417,"date":"2026-11-07T05:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/961417\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T05:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:22:18","slug":"it-took-100-years-for-someone-to-point-out-what-van-gogh-had-hidden-in-his-cafe-terrace-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/961417\/","title":{"rendered":"It took 100 years for someone to point out what van Gogh had hidden in his ‘Caf\u00e9 Terrace at Night’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vincent van Gogh<\/a> is world-famous for his paintings, though he didn\u2019t live long enough to see his own success<\/a>. Since he died in 1890, his works<\/a> have been analyzed by countless art scholars and historians, with more and more of his unique artistic genius <\/a>being revealed over time. <\/p>\n

One of his paintings took over 100 years to be fully appreciated for its subtle allusion to a famous painting motif. \u201cCaf\u00e9 Terrace at Night\u201d portrays people eating at an outdoor caf\u00e9 at night, using van Gogh\u2019s signature style and color palette (famously utilizing little to no black paint<\/a>). But that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n

Here is the painting. What do you notice? <\/p>\n

\"Vincent\u201cCaf\u00e9 Terrace at Night\u201d by Vincent van Gogh, 1888 (Public Domain<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Did van Gogh hide The Last Supper?<\/p>\n

Look closely at the golden lit area of the painting. Count how many people are on the terrace (including the person mostly hidden behind the server). Note the appearance of the server. How about the shadowy figure leaving the terrace on the left? Do you see the subtle cross in the window behind the server\u2019s head?<\/p>\n

Van Gogh appears to have hidden \u201cThe Last Supper\u201d in plain sight in this painting. Twelve diners, one for each disciple, on the terrace. Jesus serving them. Judas in shadow slipping away. The cross behind Jesus\u2019s head. It\u2019s not a huge stretch.<\/p>\n

Van Gogh was certainly no stranger to Christianity. His father was a pastor, and he himself had trained to be a preacher. He served as a missionary with impoverished coal miners, earning the nickname earning the nickname \u201cThe Christ of the Coal Mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

When church officials did not renew his contract, van Gogh turned to painting. Not terribly interested in creating overtly religious paintings like his contemporaries, he preferred instead to depict the lives of the everyday people he\u2019d set out to serve. <\/p>\n

However, the two were not so mutually exclusive. Art historians<\/a> have pointed to religious symbolism in van Gogh\u2019s works, even in scenes that don\u2019t appear to have a religious theme. Despite van Gogh writing to his brother, Theo, \u201cOf course there\u2019s no question of me doing anything from the Bible,\u201d biblical symbols show up in many of his paintings anyway.<\/p>\n

Meet the researcher behind the theory<\/p>\n

Independent researcher Jared Baxter<\/a> presented his theory that Van Gogh depicted The Last Supper in \u201cCaf\u00e9 Terrace at Night\u201d in 2015. In a two-part series<\/a>, he laid out all the evidence that led him to the conclusion, and some art scholars<\/a> have backed him up.<\/p>\n

\u201cVincent painted in his own time, with an eye to the future, not the past,\u201d Baxter wrote.<\/a> \u201cHe was inspired by his predecessors but refused to merely emulate them. Further, he could not depict angels, magi or shepherds whom he had never seen. Instead, he found the divine in nature and the sacred in everyday people from peasants and sand barge workers to matronly cradle rockers. His form of innovation was simply extracting these \u201ccommon, everyday\u201d scenes from reality and imbuing them, through his vast knowledge of history\u2019s artwork, with touches from previous masters. The implication is that within the ordinary is the sacred; maybe even bourgeois drinkers on a radiant outdoor terrace at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"vincentVincent Van Gogh (left) and brother Theo (right)<\/p>\n

Around the time of his painting \u201cCaf\u00e9 Terrace at Night,\u201d van Gogh had written his brother Theo that he had a\u00a0\u201ctremendous need for, shall I say the word, for religion.\u201d Perhaps that feeling prompted the allusion.<\/p>\n

However, we don\u2019t have any definitive communication from van Gogh himself about any Last Supper intention with the painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know when you\u2019re interpreting art, you\u2019ve got to leave open the possibility that you\u2019re not correct \u2026 there can never be 100 percent certain,\u201d Baxter\u00a0told The Huffington Post<\/a>. \u201cI think there\u2019s enough information and enough evidence to at least make a pretty good case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. It\u2019s just wild that it took over 100 years for someone to make that case. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in July. It has been updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vincent van Gogh is world-famous for his paintings, though he didn\u2019t live long enough to see his own…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":961418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[9930,76,354,355,316406,49,48,356,75,4048,218697],"class_list":["post-961417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-best-of-humanity","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-history","tag-van-gogh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}