Rembrandt’s famous painting “The Night Watch” has been fully digitized with a level of precision never before seen at the Rijksmuseum, the famous museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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With the metaverse, the name of digital twin is in fashion. Here is that of The night watch, the majestic canvas by Rembrandt which is on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Every centimeter of the 15.86 m2 of the work was photographed with a resolution of 100 megapixels. It was necessary to assemble 8,439 images to obtain a total resolution of 717 billion pixels. Therefore, it would be the photo of a artwork featuring the highest resolution ever to digitize this canvas. The masterpiece measures 363 cm × 437 cm and marks the mastery of light and the shadow that made up the artist’s talent.
For the occasion, the museum has set up a team called “Operation Night Watch”. The technicians used a Hasselblad H6D fixed on an articulated arm to take pictures. To optimize sharpness and respect for colors, each of them had a depth of field of only 125 micrometers (about 1/8e millimeter).
717 billion pixels
With each pixel spaced only 5 micrometers apart, the amount of detail found is breathtaking and this digital twin will allow historians of art and researchers to go much further in their work. They will be able to study pigment particles and the use of soaps in lead on the paint. We can also observe the fine restoration of the canvas after it was torn in 1975 with a knife. Likewise, this digitization will make it possible to follow the alteration of the work over time and to establish localized preventive treatments. Finally, since this canvas is also visible to everyone via the museum site, you will also be able to discover details that are not necessarily seen on such a large canvas.
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