Just Stop Oil activists who targeted Girl with a Pearl Earring painting jailed for two months

Climate activists across the world are targeting famous artworks to highlight the climate crisis

Two of the three Belgian climate activists who attacked the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl with a Pearl Earring last week have been sentenced to two months in jail at a fast-track court hearing.

Three people were being tried after one of them glued his forehead to the glass of the 17th-century masterpiece at a museum in The Hague.

Wouter Mouton, 45, who glued his forehead to the painting and Pieter G, who filmed it, were sentenced in the hearing on Wednesday.

The third man, who did not agree to a fast-track hearing, will go on trial on Friday. He was accused of gluing his hand on the wall next to the painting.

The protest by the three men, who were part of Just Stop Oil Belgium, was to draw attention the ongoing climate crisis. A string of similar protests have taken over parts of the world where climate activists are attacking famous artworks to highlight the issues.

Last month, activists splashed soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London and smeared mashed potato over a Claude Monet painting in Germany. In June, a man smeared a piece of cake over the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris.

At the hearing, the magistrate said she feared the activists might repeat actions if they were let out while their appeal was waiting to be heard, but did not award a longer sentence, saying that would discourage other people from demonstrating.

The public prosecutor had asked for a four-month sentence with two months suspended.

“Isn’t it ironic that climate activists who nonviolently oppose the mass slaughter of life on Earth are being condemned?” Just Stop Oil Belgium said in a statement.

On 27 October, the two men who were seen wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts were captured in a video that showed one of them gluing his head to the glass of the painting while another glued his hand to the wall. A third man was seen emptying out soup from a tin can over the man who had glued his head.

Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 1665 masterpiece which has inspired a bestselling novel and a Hollywood film (AP)

”How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless being apparently destroyed before your eyes,” one protester said. “This painting is protected by glass but the future of our children is not protected.”

The Mauritshuis, the museum in The Hague, said: “Art is defenceless and we strongly condemn trying to damage it for whichever cause.”

“Fortunately the painting... was not damaged.”