High-Res Scan of Mona Lisa Reveals Its History

daevux writes "CNN is reporting that French engineer Pascal Cotte has discovered interesting details of the history of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa from a 240-megapixel scan of the artwork in various frequencies. Cotte surmises that the painted figure's eyebrows and eyelashes probably disappeared due to poor cleaning at some point in the past. He believes he can reconstruct the painting's original skin tones."

Comments

Historical Significance to the art world

[techpawn]

He believes he can reconstruct the painting's original skin tones.

There is something to be said about a painting's appeal over the ages AS it ages. If it's restored beyond a certain point won't we lose some historical context for the pieces and the methods used?
I'm not saying I wouldn't love to see a print of what it looked like "originally" but the aging of the painting adds to the significance of the work as a whole doesn't it? If so wouldn't things like thing cheapen the priceless nature of these pieces?

Context is LOST through degradation, not gained!

[Scrameustache]

He believes he can reconstruct the painting's original skin tones.

There is something to be said about a painting's appeal over the ages AS it ages. If it's restored beyond a certain point won't we lose some historical context for the pieces and the methods used?
I'm not saying I wouldn't love to see a print of what it looked like "originally" but the aging of the painting adds to the significance of the work as a whole doesn't it? If so wouldn't things like thing cheapen the priceless nature of these pieces? No, no, NO! No it doesn't.
DAMN no!

Oh my god. Seriously, what you're saying is that a worn VHS is better than a remastered DVD.
Worse, you're somehow thinking that we'll lose the historical context... as if restoration would eliminate the millions of pages detailing that context or the millions of reproductions of the work in its aged state.

The degradation, I'll have you know, is what causes the loss of historical context.
People think that old stone churches were always gray and foreboding buildings, when historically they were colorful, but that context was lost through erosion of the pigments.

Somebody has something wrong

[bfree]

From tfa:

The device scanned a 240-million pixel image using 13 light spectrums, including ultra-violet and infrared.
The resulting ultra-high resolution photograph of 150,000 dots per inch

150,000 dpi is a lot! As best I can tell the Mona Lisa is about 30 * 21 inches or 630 square inches which at 150,000 dpi would yield a 14.175 terapixel image, just 60,000 times the claimed 240 megapixels! 240 million pixels would be only 617 dpi! I suppose the other possibilities include his "camera" was taking 150dpi, 240 million pixel images in which case he must have taken about 59,000 shots to produce a full 150,000 dpi image of the picture. I guess this is conceivable taking a shot every 0.1 inches?

Re:Context is LOST through degradation, not gained

[samkass]

I owned a stone house in Pittsburgh when I lived there. I thought I'd bought a gray stone house, but when it needed repointing and got spray-washed, I discovered I owned a yellow, red, tan, and generally pretty interestingly-colored stone house. The stones had just all turned gray because of the soot through the 20th century. So it doesn't always turn out like that.