Visit the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, the Netherlands, and you have the chance to see Johannes Vermeer’s painting ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ from perhaps a few meters away – depending on the crowd around the famous piece. Or you can explore this site which provides access to a massive 10 billion pixel scan of the painting with more detail than the human eye could ever personally see.
The scan was made last year by Hirox Europe (a company that manufactures digital microscopes) with a resolution of 93,205 x 108,565 pixels, which equates to 10,118,800,825 microscopic screenshots of the painting, each measuring just 4.4 microns in area. large occupancy. As with most gigapixel images, the digital copy of ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ was created by compiling a collection of photographs focusing on different parts of the painting, which in this case amounts to 91,000 individual photographs taken during was taken one night. The use of software developed by Hirox was to make an automated process of compiling all the photos into one image.
The scan offers an unprecedented look at the painting in more detail than any art lover would mind. But more importantly, it gives art historians and conservationists a better look at the condition of the painting, as well as the condition of previous restorations, which will help inform future restoration and conservation efforts.
However, Hirox’s digital microscope has not been pushed to its maximum capabilities. In addition to scanning the entire painting, the team created even higher resolution scans of ten specific areas, where each pixel represents only a 1.1 micron slice of the entire slice. Not only was a high resolution of the painting created during this additional scanning process, but also a 3D version of the surface revealing how small paint chips curled and curled over time at the edges.
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It may sound obsessive, but understanding what happens to famous artwork like ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ over time (the painting is now 355 years old at this point), is an important part of ensuring that in another 355 years, future generations will also be able to enjoy the original. But if they can not, there is at least one flawless digital copy.