One of the inimitable joys of visiting an art museum is being able to view paintings up close—to see their textures, frames, and the way the surface interacts with the light. But even if you had the opportunity to step past security wires and get within inches of an original canvas, you’d still never be able to see the work quite like the new, 108-gigapixel scan of Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665).
The Mauritshuis has documented its most famous acquisition in unprecedented detail with the help of lens company Hirox, which has produced a video microscope capable of capturing the tiniest speck of paint with astonishing clarity. The outfit was also involved in an earlier reproduction of the same painting, creating an image composed of 10 billion pixels.
This high-tech collaboration brings a 17th-century masterpiece to life with an interactive site inviting visitors to examine every micro detail. The new image is more than ten times as large as its predecessor—108 gigapixels translates to 108 billion pixels. A standard computer screen ranges from around four to six million pixels in its entirety. As Kottke notes, the resolution is very high, too, at 1.3 microns per pixel. (A millimeter is 1,000 microns.)
Hirox, in tandem with a company called Tuur, produced a beautiful video and virtual tour. A three-dimensional tool for exploring the topography of the surface highlights Vermeer’s mastery of light, like reflections in the sitter’s eyes, the folds of her head scarf, and the minimal dabs of white paint on the titular pearl.
This virtual exploration offers art historians and enthusiasts alike a chance to experience “Girl with a Peal Earring” like never before, regardless of where you are. But if you’re in The Hague, it’s also on view in the permanent collection of The Mauritshuis.
