Chances are you’ll imagine that you just’ve had a detailed sufficient view of Johannes Vermeer’s Lady with a Pearl Earring. You’ll have long past to The Hague and noticed the painting in person at the Mauritshuis. You’ll have zoomed into the 10 billion-pixel scan we featured right here on Open Culture in 2021. However should you haven’t frolicked with the new 108 billion-pixel scan, are you able to genuinely declare to have noticed Lady with a Pearl Earring in any respect?
At that 108-gigapixel resolution, notes Jason Kottke, “every pixel is 1.3 microns in dimension — 1000 microns is 1 millimeter.” You’ll be able to be informed extra concerning the technology at the back of the mission in this making-of video produced by Hirox Europe, the native department of the Japanese digital microscope compathe big apple responsible for each the 10 billion-pixel scan and this 108 billion-pixel one, which necessitated 88 hours of continuous scanning this relatively small canvas of 15 inches via 17.5 inches, a procedure that consequenceed in 41,000 3-d pictures.
Sure, 3-d pictures: despite the fact that Lady with a Pearl Earring, referred to as “the Mona Lisa of the North,” could also be recognized in all places in flat representations on pages, monitors, posters, and T‑shirts, it’s, in any case, a piece of oil on canvas.
Vermeer completed his ultra-realistic results no longer simply by hanging the appropriate colors in the appropriate puts, however following them on the proper thicknesses and with the appropriate textures — all of which were replicated in a “mega-sized” physical 3-d print, 100 instances larger than the original paintings, commissioned via the Mauritshuis for its Who’s that Girl? exhibition.
You’ll be able to consistent withshape your individual topographical examinationination of sections of the painting — the eyes, the lips, a fold of the turban, the earring, or even the reflection at the earring — via click oning the “3-d” howeverton on the bottom of the scan’s viewing interface. A glance this shut finds a lot about how Vermeer created this world-famous symbol, in addition to the way it’s weathered the previous 360 years. It does no longer disclose, in fact, the solutions to such long-standing mysteries because the identity of the subject or the motivations at the back of her striking presentation. Whether or not or no longer the woman with the pearl earring even existed, we will, at this level, make sure of 1 factor: she will have to really feel noticed. Input the new 108 billion-pixel scan here.
by way of Kottke
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Based totally in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and widecasts on towns, language, and culture. His initiatives come with the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him at the social webpaintings formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
