Never before and nowhere else in the world has a work of art been mapped in such detail. The largest digital image ever created from a work of art appears this morning on the site of the Rijksmuseum.
8430 pic’s
The image consists of 8430 photos taken with a 100-megapixel camera. The image has 717 billion pixels, so the distance between two pixels on the canvas is 5 micrometers (0.005 millimeters). The canvas of De Nachtwacht is 3.63 meters by 4.37 meters in size. If you would like to save the file on a computer, you will need 5.6 terabytes of free space.
Check out how detailed the photo is here:
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To ensure that every photo was sharp, the surface of De Nachtwacht had to be scanned with lasers to fine-tune the camera. A Rijksmuseum spokesperson says the photo was actually taken for researchers. “But why keep that photo to ourselves?” he says. “The Night Watch belongs to everyone.”
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Operation Night Watch
‘Operation Night Watch’ started in 2019 and is the largest ever investigation into Rembrandt’s masterpiece from 1642 last month discovered, for example, a sketch under the layers of paint of Rembrandt’s masterpiece. The researchers work in a glass room, which allows the public to follow the process.
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Although that was never the goal, the museum also encourages amateurs to take a good look at the canvas. Who knows, more details will come to light. “It is of course always nice when something is discovered,” says the spokesperson.
Rob Erdmann, the mastermind behind the project at the Rijksmuseum, is very proud of the photo. “We can see every particle of pigment and every brushstroke,” he says. “We see paint that Rembrandt didn’t mix perfectly on his palette. We can look into a crack and see the layers of paint in it. It’s like going on a hike in the Grand Canyon and seeing the geological layers.”
Museums interested
The project took two years and eight months: two years to set it up technically, two months to shoot and six months to merge all the photos into one image. Other museums, such as the Metropolitan in New York and the National Gallery in London, have already expressed interest, Erdmann says.
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