The Monastery of Saint Paul de Mausole (French: monastère Saint-Paul-de-Mausole) is a former Roman Catholic 11th—century Benedictine monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France. It was later administered by the Order of Saint Francis in 1605.

Several rooms of the building have been converted into a museum to honor the famed Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who stayed there in 1889–1890 at a time when the monastery had been converted to a lunatic asylum. At this site, van Gogh created his magnum opus, The Starry Night.

The monastery was built in the 11th century. Franciscan monks established a psychiatric asylum there in 1605.

In the aftermath of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that resulted in the self-mutilation of his left ear, Vincent van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum on 8 May 1889. Housed in a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, allowing him to occupy not only a second-story bedroom but also a ground-floor room for use as a painting studio.

• Théophile Peyron

Citations

Sources

• Naifeh, Steven and Gregory White Smith (2011). Van Gogh: The Life. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50748-9.
• Pickvance, Ronald (1984). Van Gogh in Arles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87099-376-3.
• Pickvance, Ronald (1986). Van Gogh In Saint-Rémy and Auvers (exhibition catalog, Metropolitan Museum of Art). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abrams. ISBN 0-87099-477-8.

Media related to Monastère Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Wikimedia Commons