Masterpieces Online — High Culture At High Resolution

crimeandpunishment writes "You can now see the finest details of some of the finest Italian masterpieces with just one click of your mouse. High-resolution images of classic paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Botticelli are now online with that opportunity. You can zoom in to the smallest details, even ones you wouldn't see when viewing the paintings in person at a museum. The images have a resolution of up to 28 billion pixels, which is about 3,000 times more than a photo from an average digital camera."

Comments

I Don't See ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

I think they missed one. I don't see Dogs Playing Poker. I'm just sayin' ...

Re:I Don't See ...

[hedwards]

Not really, it would be better than what we currently have, but prints are barely better than nothing. You can't reproduce with pixels what was created with pigments, it just doesn't work. You cannot currently create an image on a monitor that uses brown. No combination of RBG values will give you brown. You're also not going to be able to appreciate the effect of translucent glazing or the brushwork. Not to mention the monitor calibration and control of the lighting conditions.

For somebody with no or little knowledge of art, it would be sufficient, but it's really a pale shade of the real thing.

Re:I Don't See ...

[Reziac]

The other day I found myself ranting to a friend on that very subject. I'd never really been interested in 1600s-era art based on prints. Once I saw some with my own eyes -- wow, the difference defies description. NO print ever shows even a hint of the depth, glow, and sense of its own reality that you get from seeing these works in person.

I see we've killed their server so I'll have to wait on seeing what this effort looks like. However, I'm of the opinion that any access is better than NO access (since most of us cannot travel to see all these works in person).

And as to brown on a monitor... the nearest you can come is actually a sort of grubby purple that fools the eye if you don't look too closely, or lack real brown to compare to. Very irritating (especially when trying to get it visually-right for a client's logo -- all in BROWN!)

Links to the actual images...

[iammani]

Caravaggio, Bacchus
Botticelli, The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli, La Primavera

Re:Yawn...

[dkleinsc]

That's not why I'd even consider going to an art museum. After all, since a lot of those folks don't even allow you to take photographs, if you just want to say you've been, you can just lie about it.

No, go to an art museum because you might see something interesting, unique, beautiful, or mind-bending. I'm not even very visual myself, but a good art museum's works will draw your eyes right in and convince you to spend a while exploring the details.

Re:and who said that 10Mpix is more than enough?

[BrokenHalo]

You only need more pixels when you need a larger image and you need to be closer than what the current number allows.

Of course, in a sense, nothing has changed here: back in the day when we all used cellulose film, we all knew that if we wanted an image that needed blowing up to a large size, we needed a larger-format negative. We used to swear by the 6x6 cm "medium" format (e.g. from Hasselblad or Rolleiflex) for quick work, but if we wanted really crisp resolution, we used 5x4" or sometimes 8x10" plates.

Although I occasionally miss the discipline of black-and-white (always with Ilford film), there's only one thing that has really disappointed me with the move to digital photography: the apparent failure of print media to approximate the luminous colour and definition of Cibachrome (now, I believe, known as Ilfochrome) colour prints created from positive transparencies. Many years ago, I used to do this myself, but now I don't even have a darkroom...

Re:Another cool site

[Andy Smith]

Well done to whoever marked this as troll. I was trying to be a whiny bitch!