Starry Night Sorceress?
Main Questions:
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-Is there a sorceress hidden intentionally in Van Gogh's Starry Night?
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-Is it possible this was done on purpose or is it just pareidolia?
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-What influence does pareidolia have on how we perceive art and what the motives behind a piece are?
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-What can we learn from this and apply artistically?
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I was messing around on the Sketchbook app (pencil over orange background logo) with Van Gogh's Starry Night painting and realized something very bizarre and strangely awe-inducing. It was strange how easy it was for me to find this hidden picture, and it makes me wonder if this was intended or just a strange pareidolial coincidence.
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I used ChatGPT to try searching for anyone else who had posted or commented on this specific attribute of Van Gogh's most famous painting, but it couldn't find anything, so I tried manually searching the web and didn't find any instance of this specifically being mentioned. If anyone happens to find anyone else who mentioned this phenomenon I would love to know. If not, I'm also just curious what you all think this looks like and what it could symbolize.
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Here's what I did to find this so anyone who wants to can try replicating this:
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-Downloaded image of Starry Night and opened in the Sketchbook app
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-Turned the image 90° counterclockwise
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-Duplicated the layer and turned the opacity of the new layer to 50%
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-Mirrored the translucent layer across the vertical axis
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What I see:
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-So now we get this very mystical looking person - maybe a woman by my interpretation - with a veil or hood on their head, with a devilish grin, sitting on a golden turquoise throne. The top of the throne is either being shined on by a golden light or is itself emitting it. There is a small triangle under the person's face that could be some sort of necklace or emblem holding two ends of a cape together.
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-There seems to be a spiritual essense around the being and its throne that appears as ghostly mist or smoke, possibly from which she emerged. There is a black horizontal line that seems to be some sort of table or surface, possibly even a hole, portal, or rip in space. On each corner in an orb, and there are 5.
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-Above the black width is a brighter orb, that could be seen as being held by the woman or held up by her will. She seems in control of it, and I think it seems like a central part of the image, one of the most intruiging aspects of the picture.
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-The 5 fainter orbs around the black shape resemble a pentagram in a way, with the brighter orb above it, almost in command of the other orbs, controlled by the sorceress above even the bright orb.
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I am curious what you all think about this because it is possible I am the first person to share this discovery online or even the first to notice it at all. If anyone else has noticed this before, please let me know!
I am curious about alternate interpretations on what you see or how you interpret it, because I find this detail about the Starry Night painting very intriguing and mind-bending.
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Do you think there is any way Van Gogh could have figured out what a mirrored version of his painting would look like so he could create it specifically in a manner to make it look like this when flipped? I'm considering the possibility, although it seems rationally unlikely.
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Open to ideas, very curious and excited to see what you think!
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P.S. The additional image was a little more experimental, where all I did additionally was adjust the HSL on the translucent layer and set the hue to 180. This shows a little more of how the shapes interact with eachother, and gives a little bit more color on the sides while making the center more muted and greyish. Any ideas with this are welcome too.