http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101001/ap_on_hi_te/eu_italy_digital_masterpieces By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 1, 11:35 am ET
ROME – Imagine being so close to Botticelli's Venus that you can see the strands of her blond hair, the shades of pink in her cheeks, the cracks in the centuries-old paint.
That sensation is now just a click away.
This week, an Italian company put online high-resolution images of "The Birth of Venus" and five other masterpieces from the Uffizi gallery in Florence, including works by Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci. By zooming in with the click of a mouse, the smallest details can appear — even ones that aren't typically visible when viewing artworks at the distances required by museums for security.
Mario Resca, a Culture Ministry official who worked on the project, says it's like looking at a painting "with a giant magnifying glass." In Caravaggio's "Bacchus," for example, the trace of a tiny self-portrait that the artist painted in the wine jug becomes detectable, as do the wine bubbles on the rim of the jug. In Leonardo's "Annunciation" computer users can see the brush strokes in the maritime background and the delicate patterns of the cloth underneath the Bible.
The images have a resolution of up to 28 billion pixels, said Vincenzo Mirarchi, CEO of the Haltadefinizione company that digitized the paintings. That's about 3,000 times stronger than the resolution of an average digital camera.
snip
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
