You might consider that you just’ve had a detailed sufficient view of Johannes Ver­meer’s Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring. You could have gone to The Hague and seen the paint­ing in per­son at the Mau­rit­shuis. You could have zoomed into the ten bil­lion-pix­el scan we fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture in 2021. However when you haven’t hung out with the new 108 bil­lion-pix­el scan, are you able to actual­ly declare to have seen Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring in any respect?

At that 108-gigapix­el res­o­lu­tion, notes Jason Kot­tke, “every pix­el is 1.3 microns in dimension — 1000 microns is 1 mil­lime­ter.” You may be taught extra concerning the tech­nol­o­gy behind the undertaking in this mak­ing-of video pro­duced by Hirox Europe, the native department of the Japan­ese dig­i­tal micro­scope com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for each the ten bil­lion-pix­el scan and this 108 bil­lion-pix­el one, which neces­si­tat­ed 88 hours of continuous scan­ning this rel­a­tive­ly small can­vas of 15 inch­es by 17.5 inch­es, a course of that end result­ed in 41,000 3D photographs.

Sure, 3D photographs: although Woman with a Pearl Ear­ring, referred to as “the Mona Lisa of the North,” could also be identified far and large in flat rep­re­sen­ta­tions on pages, screens, posters, and T‑shirts, it’s, in any case, a piece of oil on can­vas.

Ver­meer achieved his ultra-real­is­tic results not simply by placing the suitable col­ors in the suitable locations, however apply­ing them on the proper thick­ness­es and with the suitable tex­tures — all of which have been repli­cat­ed in a “mega-sized” phys­i­cal 3D print, 100 occasions larg­er than the orig­i­nal work, com­mis­sioned by the Mau­rit­shuis for its Who’s that Girl? exhi­bi­tion.

You may per­kind your personal topo­graph­i­cal examination­i­na­tion of sec­tions of the paint­ing — the eyes, the lips, a fold of the tur­ban, the ear­ring, and even the reflec­tion on the ear­ring — by click on­ing the “3D” however­ton on the bot­tom of the scan’s view­ing inter­face.  A glance this shut reveals a lot about how Ver­meer cre­at­ed this world-famous picture, in addition to the way it’s weath­ered the previous 360 years. It doesn’t reveal, after all, the solutions to such long-stand­ing mys­ter­ies because the iden­ti­ty of the sub­ject or the moti­va­tions behind her strik­ing pre­sen­ta­tion. Whether or not or not the lady with the pearl ear­ring even exist­ed, we will, at this level, make certain of 1 factor: she should really feel seen. Enter the new 108 bil­lion-pix­el scan here.

by way of Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.