OK all you conspiracy buffs and fans of The Da Vinci Code, here’s your chance to get all up close and personal with the master’s famous fresco from the comfort of your computer chair.
The folks at Haltadefinizione, who previously posted zoomable ultra-high resolution images of Gaudenzio Ferrari’s wonderfully intricate Vita di Cristo, and Andrea Pozzo’s amazing trompe l’oeil vault, Gloria di Sant’Ignazio, at 8.6 and 9.8 gigapixels respectively, have posted a new 16 (count ‘em!) gigapixel image of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
To give you some idea, that’s 1,600 times higher resolution than a typical 10 megapixel digital camera. You can get down to the level of examining individual chips of plaster if you want, but you’ll probably want to stay out at about 6-10% of the potential magnification just to be able to see recognizable parts of the image.
Actually, I find the hi-res version of Pozzo’s ceiling more rewarding to explore this way, flying in and out through his imaginary sky. The controls allow you to immediately turn off the inexplicable music, zoom and scroll, and even tuck the smaller preview window out of the way.
The da Vinci image is unfortunately watermarked, but it’s still fascinating to be able to see it up close. The curator points out: “You can see how Leonardo made the cups transparent, something you can’t ordinarily see.”
Intended to make examination of the painting possible for numerous scholars, particularly amid some controversy about Milan’s ability to protect the work, which has deteriorated seriously, from the city’s severe pollution problem, the image has been made available to the public, and you can zoom, scroll and examine to your heart’s content.
Leonardo reportedly used some experimental techniques in the painting, diverging from the traditional methods of fresco that have made it one of the most durable painting methods known to mankind, with unfortunate results.
For those interested in the pop-culture phenomenon of the Dan Brown’s book and the atrendant movie, you can zoom in on the figure to Christ’s right and see that it is pretty easy to interpret it as feminine. Also, if you print the image out on a vinyl disc and play it backwards on a phonograph, it says “I buried Paul…”.
[Link courtesy of Karl Kofoed]
Interesting! In May I wrote an article abot that too:
http://blog.tice.de/beitrag.php?file=2007_05_28_1130
There’s a good reason the Pozzo is more fun to examine: Leonardo’s mural is in wretched condition — even after years of paint-chip-by-paint-chip restoration work. But the damage can’t all be blamed on pollution in Milan; Leonardo’s experiment with fresco painting was already deteriorating during his own lifetime.
But from Vasari we have the observation that when the Last Supper was finished, “The texture of the very cloth on the table was rendered so cunningly that the linen itself could not look more realistic.” Today we can only imagine.
This is nonetheless an amazing degree of reproduction. I’d love to see some other Italian frescoes this way. The Raphaels in the Vatican or the Sistine Chapel murals by Michelangelo, Botticelli, et al.
Does anyone know the song that plays on this? It’s wonderful.
I don’t know this particular piece, but it sounds like a loose interpretation of Bach’s “Brandenberg Suite, Air on the G String”.
I found this on a research site recently about mirror imaging and thought you would find it interesting, ( The method is one we define as “The intersecting, perpendicular mirror plane, image encryption process” ™. The final positions of the mirrors upon coming to rest, placed near the edges parallel and adjacent to a “line of planned intersection”™ in the paintings or drawings, when properly viewed, yield a series of constructed images. These constructed images become complete and exist only in the “mirrored plane of encryption”™, and only when the mirror plane is perfectly aligned parallel and precisely adjacent to the planned intersection line and perpendicular to the original plane of the artwork.
One of the keys to the encryption process is in identifying the location, angle and position of the line of planned intersection. Without understanding the process by which the line is determined a viewer cannot place the mirror in the proper position to create the encryption plane and hence construct the hidden images. Determining how to locate the intersection lines is a tedious process, one that took 4 years of trial and error to understand and apply.
It is his thinking outside the box and his inventive genius creating images outside the frame that is unique and that requires an understanding of the man’s thought processes in order to uncover.) The link is at: http://www.lionardofromvinci.com/Research.html
good job man