Google Art Project

[Octane]

All,

www.googleartproject.com (http://www.googleartproject.com)

17 gigapixel high resolution images of artworks found in various galleries and museums around the world. Try loading up Boticelli's The Birth of Venus and zooming in to see the cracking paint.

One word: awesome.

H

[ballaratdragons]

H, I have just looked through about 100 paintings and haven't found it yet.

What gallery is it in? :shrug:

[Octane]

Ken,

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

H

[ballaratdragons]

Fantastic, thanks H. Found it :thumbsup:
I was unaware of the almost cartoon style used in this painting. Cartoon style as in the black lines around the edge of details.
Studying the toes shows a very early Japanese method.

Some paintings are full of cracks and the google zoom-in detail is amazing!!!

[Octane]

Not wrong. : )

I've been fortunate enough to visit some of those galleries/museums and it's a blast revisiting it all again, as it were. : )

H

[gary]

Hi H,

Thanks for the heads-up on this which is appreciated.

It certainly is a technically well executed and fabulous resource and another
example of the web at its very best.

Short of flying there and seeing them for oneself, one would have to previously
rely on access to a library that owned expensive art books. For example, a gifted
kid who might be the next aspiring Arthur Boyd but who lives in rural Australia
and who does not have access to such a library, this type of educational
resource over the net could be like a bolt of lightning to their imagination.

[Octane]

Totally agree with you, Gary.

But, there is one thing that can't be replaced -- seeing these works of art in the flesh. There is no way to portray texture and colour, correctly and faithfully over this medium.

H

[multiweb]

Pretty cool! Been to Florence a lot as a kid. We used to go there on school excursions in summer. I remember seeing all the sculptures and paintings. Lot of Michelangelo work there, even unfinished. What amazed me the most was the faux-perspective painted on curved and spherical ceilings in the churches. You could really see the depth from the right viewpoint. All the buildings are made of a mix of white, green and red marble blocks, like lego puzzles, on a scale that is so gigantic it's hard to comprehend how they built all this.

[ballaratdragons]

Crikeys Marc!

In my school days we had 2 excursions.
One to the Port Kembla Steelworks and the other to a Fridge factory!

[mswhin63]

Quite incredible detail in the photos.

[gary]

Hi H,

Couldn't agree more.

For example, one of the first I went and checked on the site was The Starry Night
in the MoMA in New York.

In the flesh, it is simply breathtaking from the moment you enter the gallery.
Its highly textured, three-dimensional swirls of paint along with subtleties that
go with that, such as the highlights from light reflecting off those textures, are
technically impossible to capture in a flat image, no matter how high the resolution.
It is often by these textures that one not only appreciates the actual physical
execution of the work, but that one can sense the passion of the mind and hand
that went into creating it.

Another example of what is hard to capture on the web is what I will
call the the obligatory "big painting" most galleries seem to have
one or more of somewhere in their collection. :lol: It is often baroque, tens of
feet wide and tens of feet high, probably painted under commission for some patron
and not necessarily to everyone's taste. You know the type. It probably once looked
good on the mansion wall somewhere. Often technically brilliant, it may not feature
high on the list if you were allowed to take one picture home with you, but
nevertheless you walk away thinking you have to hand it to the guy for
taking on such a big project and it had a pretty neat frame too. :lol:
Anyway, it is pretty hard to capture the man hours that went into works like
that when you are looking at an image of it even on a reasonably sized LCD monitor.
You really have to go to the gallery and look up and say, "Holy Smokes!
This painting takes up the entire wall." :)

[ballaratdragons]

But that Google website is the closest many of us will ever get.
For that I applaude it.

Until now I have never seen the minute detail in these works of Art.
And I am blown away!!!

And this is a good thing as I will never see the real items.

[gary]

Hi Ken,

Exactly. As we discussed earlier in this thread, it is indeed the web at its
best. :thumbsup:

Modern, low cost personal computers and ultra high speed communication are
helping fill in the gaps of that other great twentieth century engineering innovation,
the wide bodied passenger jet. The 747 allowed millions to fly there. Now the Internet
allows one to see it without leaving home.

[ballaratdragons]

and I know which one I can afford :rofl:
:thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

WOW! Check out the Rembrandts at the Rijksmuseum ... breathtaking!!!

Thanks for posting that H! :thumbsup:

Cheers, Marcus

[Octane]

Gary,

Agree with you, re: Starry Night. I remember remarking on here about Starry Night Over the Rhone, a few months back when the Impressionists came to Canberra.

Also, the big paintings -- like the Wedding Feast at Cana which is opposite the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, or, as Marcus just mentioned the Rijksmuseum; Rembrandt's The Night Watch. Holy wow. :eyepop:

H