When a London judge handed down prison sentences on Friday to two climate activists, who threw soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” he said he wanted to deter protesters from trying similar stunts.

Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Phoebe Plummer, 23, to two years in jail for damaging the painting’s frame during the 2022 attack at the National Gallery in London. Anna Holland, 22, received 20 months for the same offense. Their actions were “criminally idiotic” and could have caused “irreversible damage” to a masterpiece, Judge Hehir said.

His words did not have the desired effect.

Just over an hour later, three other members of Plummer and Holland’s protest group, Just Stop Oil, entered the National Gallery’s “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” exhibition and threw Heinz vegetable soup over the painting again. They also splashed the orange liquid on another van Gogh “Sunflowers” painting, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the gallery’s blockbuster show.

In a video of the incident, released on social media by Just Stop Oil, museum patrons appear startled. One person shouts: “Why are you doing that?” The London police said it had arrested the three activists.

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A National Gallery spokeswoman said in an emailed statement that “the paintings were removed from display and examined by a conservator and are unharmed.” The museum would “reopen the exhibition as soon as possible,” the statement added.

A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Museum of Art said that the National Gallery had informed the museum “that the painting has been cleaned and there is no permanent damage.”

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