This van Gogh Minecraft build belongs in a museum

The Dutch master Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889, and it is widely regarded as among his very finest works. The picture is oil-on-canvas and dominated by a night sky, roiled by wind-currents and pierced-through by radiant orbs of yellow, set above a small village pockmarked by window-lights. The painting has been held by the Museum of Modern Art since 1941 and is one of the most recognizable images in western art.

Minecraft creator ChrisDaCow has spent years making seriously impressive builds, and set himself the challenge of recreating The Starry Night in the game. Here's a brief time-lapse of the end result:

This 8-minute video right at the top encapsulates what in the end was a month of work as ChrisDaCow struggled with how to build elements of the scene in order to get the right perspective and capture elements like brushstrokes as best he could. This wasn't just an aesthetic challenge: the amount of engineering know-how that's going into elements like the buildings is seriously impressive.

ChrisDaCow says that what lies behind this is "honestly just years of practice and a love for the craft!" I asked Chris about why he'd embarked on the project. "I set myself the goal because starry night seems like it would be such a beautiful place to walk around in," he writes. "I wanted to be able to look up from inside the town and actually see van Gogh's Starry Night sky! What's funny is I was not a major van Gogh fan before I started but after creating the entire build he is definitely my favorite artist.