Sketch of Van Gogh's ear star of new show

The star of a new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum is not one of the Dutch painter's flamboyant masterpieces, but a rough sketch by a junior French provincial doctor.

The sketch, recently discovered in an American library, shows just how much of his left ear Van Gogh sliced off in December 1888: almost all of it, according to the drawing by Dr Felix Rey, who treated Van Gogh.

The exhibition, On the Verge of Insanity, which opened on July 15 at the museum in Amsterdam, charts Vincent van Gogh's descent into mental illness, his notorious self-mutilation in the southern French town of Arles and, finally, his decision to take his own life.