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

rijksmuseum.nl

61–70 of 153 posts

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

#61
post #51

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 always find it fascinating! Much like it is important in a museum of natural history to note "science isn't finished, some of these things are still under research" it's important to contextualize the painting you see today. The painting today is different than it was fifty years ago or a hundred years ago or from the day it was completed. It's common for paintings to be modified after completion, either by the cre…

Yep, paintings are living artifacts that evolve over time

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

#62

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…

I remember what I liked about Rijks upon visiting was that it was organized by decade, and had not only paintings, but various historical artifacts as well. Like state corporation sealed opium, which offered a context for the contemporary relaxed attitude of the Dutch towards drug consumption. And in general offered many windows into how the country grew up to be what it is. So yes, much history!

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

#63

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.

Famous art that's stunningly bigger in person than I expected:

   - The Raft of the Medusa (Géricault)
   - Guernica (Picasso)
   - The Hallucinogenic Toreador (Dalí)
Cannot recommend seeing art in person enough.

Aside from the scale, it's also impossible to fully capture color or translucency in screen/page-presented imaging.

And so much of the European painting mastery in the 1400s+ is the manipulation of non-opaque paint to create a desired effect.

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

#65
post #48

First time I visited the Rijksmuseum I was of course excited to see the night watch. I found it on a side wall, 20x15 cm and was really surprised. I was expecting something more grandiose. But never mind, I love paintings from that era so I went on admiring the others. At some point I was in the middle of the central corridor and it then hit me... Wow. Before getting to the main part of the museum, there were two tem…

The Nights Watch takes up nearly an entire wall, not sure what you saw but it wasn't the actual painting.

Not only does it take up the entire wall, IIRC part of it was actually cut in order for it to fit that wall.

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

#66

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…

If you want a really interesting version of the work, go to the Royal Delft factory. They made a reproduction in their famous blue tile. It's about the same size as the original.

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

#67
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…

the account might be a combination of "deter abusive downloads" and "help, we have not enough members" combined.. now thinking, the result of account gets sent to administration and then funders, too, as a report result. not defending the practice, but the institution has to defend and maintain, too.

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

#69

reminds me of microsoft seadragon/photosynth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seadragon_Software

It's basically the same technique. Same as Google Maps too

The tiled zoom thing is everywhere, and lots of museums publish high resolution images this way. There’s a handy tool to reconstruct an image at any zoom level from a url: https://dezoomify-rs.ophir.dev/

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

#70

There's something oddly satisfying in that you keep zooming in impressively close, and the image remains clean and non blurry.

The map or whatever they use to achieve the online widget is extremely impressive. I’ve never seen such a clean implementation of a progressively loading zoom tool like that before, apart from in map applications and even they often suffer from buffering.
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