JUST Stop Oil vandals threw soup over two Van Gogh paintings at the National Gallery after fellow activists were jailed for the same stunt.
Three eco-idiots targeted the masterpiece displayed in the 'Poets and Lovers' exhibition in London today.
The paintings were covered just hours after fellow vandals Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were sentenced for the same stupidity.
Plummer, 23, was handed two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000-worth of damage to the artwork's frame at the National Gallery in London in 2022.
Meanwhile Holland, 22, was given 20 months for the same offence.
The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, chucked two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October two years ago.
They sat in front of the artwork and glued their hands to the wall beneath it.
The frame was purchased by the gallery in 1999, the court heard, and was valued at £28,000.
Sentencing the women, Judge Christopher Hehir said the "cultural treasure" could have been "seriously damaged or even destroyed".
Judge Hehir continued: "Soup might have seeped through the glass. You couldn't have cared less if the painting was damaged or not. You had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers."
The judge told Plummer: "You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it. You do not."
Judge Hehir said they "came within the width of a pane of glass of destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world".
Painted in Arles in the south of France in August 1888, van Gogh's painting shows 15 sunflowers standing in a yellow pot against a yellow background.
