The Story Behind The Only Van Gogh In Iran: 'At Eternity's Gate' The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) ### Van Gogh's“At Eternity's Gate” and the Identified Model Behind the Image, as Iran's Museums Face New Risks

The hunched figure with clenched fists in Vincent van Gogh's“At Eternity's Gate” has long read as a universal emblem of despair. Now, the man who posed for the image has been identified: Adrianus Zuyderland, a 72-year-old Dutchman with prominent side-whiskers who sat for Van Gogh in a number of drawings.

The identification sharpens the human story behind one of the artist's most psychologically charged compositions. Despite the work's funereal mood, there is no evidence Zuyderland was near death when Van Gogh made studies for the lithograph. In fact, Zuyderland lived to 87 - an unusually long life for the period.

“At Eternity's Gate” is often discussed as a kind of self-portrait, not because the sitter resembles Van Gogh, but because the posture appears to mirror the artist's own mental state. The tightly balled hands and bowed head suggest a private anguish, a bodily language that aligns with what was being reported about Van Gogh's condition at the time.

Two weeks before the artist began work on the image, Dr Théophile Peyron, who ran the asylum where Van Gogh was confined, wrote to the artist's brother Theo with a bleak assessment. Vincent, Peyron said, remained depressed:“He usually sits with his head in his hands, and if someone speaks to him, it is as though it hurts him, and he gestures for them to leave him alone.”

The timeline lends the lithograph an added gravity. Less than three months later, Van Gogh would be dead, after shooting himself in what has been widely described as a moment of despair.

The print's later journey is almost as striking as its emotional charge. Van Gogh gave an inscribed impression to his Dutch artist friend Anton van Rappard. After moving through several private collections, the lithograph was acquired in the early 1970s by the New York businessman Nelson Rockefeller. From there, it ultimately entered Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art - a destination that has become newly fraught amid escalating danger to Iran's cultural infrastructure.

With the museum reportedly closed immediately after the American and Israeli attack on February 28, questions have intensified about the safety of works held in Iranian institutions. The Van Gogh print is hoped to be secured in the museum's storerooms, but the broader picture is grim: museums, historic buildings, and archaeological sites across the country are now exposed to heightened risk.

On March 9, several richly decorated historic buildings in Isfahan - Iran's capital under the 17th-century Safavid dynasty - were damaged by nearby bombing. Tehran's Golestan Palace also sustained damage. And on February 28 to 29, a bomb was dropped in the same street as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, roughly one kilometer to the south.

The proximity underscores a painful imbalance: while collections may be moved, sealed, or stored, the people living around these institutions cannot be protected in the same way. For now, the fate of individual masterpieces may hinge on the quiet, practical decisions of museum staff - and on whether the next strike lands a little closer.

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