The Prado Museum in Madrid has what they had considered to be an inferior late-era replica of the Mona Lisa, a portrait surrounded by black. But when conservators compared infrared images of their copy with images taken in 2004 from the Leonardo's masterpiece, they found that the Prado replica closely resembled early under-drawings covered by the Mona Lisa everyone sees. Yesterday, Prado held a news conference to announce that their restoration efforts are nearly done and displayed the work in progress. The comparison is striking, showing details that might have been visible when the Mona Lisa was fresh, 500 years ago. The Guardian has more details and a high-detail portion of the apprentice's painting, believed to be by Francesco Melzi. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Feb 2, 2012 - 20 comments

Topologies is an audiovisual work led by artist Quayola in collaboration with software artist Mauritius Seeger and musician Matthias Kispert, in which high-resolution photographs of Velazquez' Las Meninas and Tiepolo's L’ Immacolata Concezione are reduced to triangular meshes and transformed by sound, made into hypnotic ambient works: Excerpt I (Velazquez) | Excerpt II (Tiepolo). [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 22, 2011 - 4 comments

Google Earth moves to square centimeter resolution, when it comes to art at Madrid's Prado Museum. Zoom in on 14-gigapixel images (about 1400 times the detail of a standard 10-gigapixel camera) of some of the museum's masterpieces, via Google Earth or Google Maps (start here). It's like putting your nose right up to the painting. Some details at Google Blog. Be sure to watch the how-it-was-done video.
posted by beagle on Jan 14, 2009 - 40 comments