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Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

rijksmuseum.nl

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Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#21

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

wkat4242 wrote: post #18

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

Recommend Peter Greenaway’s film „J’Accuse” about Rembrandt and that painting. It shares your criticism and argues that in it’s own time, that painting did as well.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#22

Post by Freak_NL »

re wrote: post #9
Freak_NL wrote: post #3

An older, lower resolution image (11206 × 9320 pixels) can be downloaded here: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=nachtwacht&p=... To avoid the dumb mandatory account login, just use https://bugmenot.com/view/rijksmuseum.nl . It worked just now (so be nice and leave it working). Despite the ill-advised mandatory account (really, what's up with that?), the Rijksmuseum is providing a better service than the…

Wikimedia has a slightly higher-res image more easily accessible: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Nightwatch_by_Re... (14,168 × 11,528 px)

Odd that the resolution differs. The source linked to from Wikimedia Commons is the same page at the museum's website as the one I linked to.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#23

Post by kwanbix »

wkat4242 wrote: post #18

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

What is so incredible is the technique they used, the level of detail and how lifelike they are.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#24

Post by davidmr »

curiousgal wrote: post #8

To be honest I don't understand the obsession about documenting things that are done to the painting. Going through that section of the museum I felt like the curators cared more about showcasing their efforts to store the painting than the painting itself.

I think it’s a way of keeping the museum’s single most popular piece of art on display whilst working it. I think most museums would remove it for a while, but so many people come specifically to see this painting that they want to keep it viewable, so they make a little show of its restoration.

I dunno; I’ve been through that floor 5 or 6 times since they started work, and people always seem to love the spectacle of it.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#25

Post by throwup238 »

curiousgal wrote: post #8

To be honest I don't understand the obsession about documenting things that are done to the painting. Going through that section of the museum I felt like the curators cared more about showcasing their efforts to store the painting than the painting itself.

Preserving and restoring an oil painting that old and large is a minor achievement, especially considering how many people have tried to destroy the painting in the last hundred years.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#26

Post by gyomu »

wkat4242 wrote: post #18

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

> One of the things special to me about the night watch is that it's huge in real life which I never really appreciated before I saw it. In contrast, the Mona Lisa at the Louvre was disappointingly tiny.

I had the same experience seeing a print of Hokusai’s Great Wave. For whatever reason it was built up in my mind as a huge piece, but in reality it’s the size of a standard sheet of paper.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#27

Post by andrepd »

curiousgal wrote: post #8

To be honest I don't understand the obsession about documenting things that are done to the painting. Going through that section of the museum I felt like the curators cared more about showcasing their efforts to store the painting than the painting itself.

Why not? It's an old work of art, if you're going to make changes to it you better do the best equivalent of `git commit` that you physically can, to preserve how it was before your change.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#28

Post by dewey »

curiousgal wrote: post #8

To be honest I don't understand the obsession about documenting things that are done to the painting. Going through that section of the museum I felt like the curators cared more about showcasing their efforts to store the painting than the painting itself.

Sometimes I find these things more interesting than the painting. I think it's good to also highlight what the museum is working on. Otherwise people would think it's just a room where they hang up new paintings once in a while, the restoring and research part would then be even more invisible.
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