
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in a new gigapixel image - omarchowdhury
http://www.openculture.com/2020/06/an-immaculate-copy-of-leonardos-the-last-supper-digitized-by-google.html
======
huskyr
Note that this is a copy by Giampietrino, a pupil of Leonardo, not the
original mural in Milan. For comparison, here's a high resolution version of
the original:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Last...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Last_Supper_-
_Leonardo_Da_Vinci_-_High_Resolution_32x16.jpg).

~~~
laichzeit0
The original has probably ceased to be the "original" since about 1550 though.
This copy is ironically closer to what the original looked like.

~~~
huskyr
Yeah, it's a miracle the original even survived, given that it was used as a
stable, stones were thrown at it and the convent was bombed during the war.
The 'Damage and restoration' section of the Wikipedia article is almost
comical:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#Dam...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_\(Leonardo\)#Damage_and_restorations).

~~~
aosaigh
> In 1821, Stefano Barezzi, an expert in removing whole frescoes from their
> walls intact, was called in to remove the painting to a safer location; he
> badly damaged the center section before realizing that Leonardo's work was
> not a fresco.

This made me laugh. I wasn't aware of its history. It's amazing how much
effort has gone into preserving it over the centuries.

~~~
lou1306
Da Vinci's experiments with "frescoes" were tragicomical themselves. The guy
really tried his darnedest to make frescoes as lifelike as oil paintings.
Results: most of his fresco works are either lost or need a lot of restoration
work.

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dwheeler
It's a stunningly beautiful work, but it also reminds me about the fragility
of works.

The original is badly damaged. Thankfully, we have this copy, and now that
it's been recorded electronically in theory we will at least have this version
forever. But in practice, I fear that a lot of data will disappear. Modern
hard drives and ssds have a frighteningly short lifetime. There are some
organizations that are trying to record some of this, such as the internet
archive, but it is not clear to me that they are going to last in the long
term.

I would like to be more confident that much of the works of the present and
past (like this) will survive into the future.

~~~
tutfbhuf
I think it will as long as people can download it, have their own copy, re-
upload and share it peer-to-peer.

I think the single most important thing is to make sure to have many copies
around the world and not just to rely on one or a few (even if they are well
protected and properly conserved).

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Things like this seriously need a download link, otherwise it might be
archived but really it's just a copy in Google's servers.

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twelvechairs
' _copy of_ Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper'

~~~
muterad_murilax
Yeah, thanks. I wondered what had happened to the doorway below Jesus. :)

~~~
laichzeit0
"In 1652, a doorway was cut through the (then unrecognisable) painting, and
later bricked up"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_\(Leonardo\))

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Wow! The level of detail is so amazing. I have seen photos of the painting
online and in books, but had never noticed the halos around each of the
disciples except for Judas.

~~~
huskyr
That's probably because this is not the original, but a contemporary copy.
There are no halos visible on this high resolution image of the original.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Last...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Last_Supper_-
_Leonardo_Da_Vinci_-_High_Resolution_32x16.jpg)

------
jansan
Obvious question: Is this powered by the same frontend technology as Google
Maps? It sure feels like it.

~~~
lovasoa
I don't know a lot about google maps, but I worked on the zoomable image
formats used in Google Arts and Culture. It's quite interesting, because they
tried to prevent the image tiles from being downloaded by signing tile URLs
and encrypting the JPEG images. I think there is a lot to learn about the
format by reading the sources of dezoomify :

\-
[https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/blob/master/dezoomers/g...](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/blob/master/dezoomers/google-
arts-culture.js)

\-
[https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/blob/master/dezoomers/g...](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/blob/master/dezoomers/google-
arts-culture-crypto.js)

------
rburhum
The resolution of this copy is amazing. I never noticed details like the
sandals or the houses+castles in the background. Amazing work!

------
rakic
Can anyone recommend a working script that downloads and stitches the highest
resolution image available from here:

[https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-last-supper-
attr...](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-last-supper-attributed-
to-giampietrino-and-giovanni-antonio-boltraffio/)

~~~
lovasoa
I maintain a suite of opensource tools that do exactly that: download zoomable
image tiles and stitch them together.

\- dezoomify ([https://dezoomify.ophir.dev](https://dezoomify.ophir.dev)) is a
web application. It is super easy to use, but the final size of the image is
limited by the browser. No browser can create gigapixel canvases.

\- dezoomify-rs ([https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-
rs/](https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-rs/)) is a command-line desktop
application for Linux, MacOS, and Windows that does the same thing. It has no
limitation (other than the one imposed by the file formats themselves) on the
final image size.

\- dezoomify-extension ([https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-
extension/](https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-extension/)) is a browser
extension to extract zoomable image URLs from webpages. It is less relevant
for google arts and culture, where the zoomable image URL is the URL of the
viewer page itself.

If someone is interested by how the zoomable image format used by google arts
works, the source code of dezoomify-rs is quite understandable:
[https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-
rs/tree/master/src/goog...](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-
rs/tree/master/src/google_arts_and_culture)

In the case of this image, I'm not sure the highest zoom level saved as a
single PNG makes a lot of sense. No image viewer will accept to open a PNG
file of this size. For JPEG, the format does not even allow images of that
size.

~~~
rakic
Edit: I’m a dummy.

~~~
lovasoa
Yes, as I wrote, the final size of the image is limited by the browser. See
[1] for more details. The highest resolution version can only be downloaded by
dezoomify-rs [2], not dezoomify.

[1]
[https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/issues/296](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify/issues/296)

[2] [https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-
rs/](https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-rs/)

------
Markoff
Thanks to zoomable version I was able to relive times of dial-up modems again.

------
Wistar
Is it just me? I cannot find a a link to the actual gigpixel image anywhere on
that page.

~~~
chirau
It looks like it is split into multiple sections. When you inspect the page
under the 'Network' tab, you'll find at least 4 individual pieces that combine
to form the whole image.

------
lmilcin
Note, that this is A COPY of Last Supper, mentioned in the article but not
prominently enough:

"The Royal Academy of Arts and Google teamed up on a high-resolution scan of a
copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painted by his students."

------
coliveira
This must have been the first time 13 people used only one side of the
table...

~~~
mamon
To be fair, there are clearly the plates set on the other side. The painting
is supposed to catch the moment when some of the apostoles stood up to get
together with their comrades. you can see some of them standing behind the
back of the others, not sitting.

Also, the apostole on the Jesus's right is clearly a woman...

~~~
coliveira
And they did that for what? A selfie?

~~~
mamon
No, they did that because Jesus had just broken the news that he'll be
betrayed by Judas. The whole scene shows the shock and a heated discussion of
that revealation.

~~~
coliveira
Shocking, but no reason for them to jump to the other side of the table. That
only works on fiction.

------
conistonwater
Maybe it's distributed systems thinking, but they should really paint six more
of these copies so that we can withstand a random failure of any three.

~~~
gruturo
That sounds wasteful. Just use some good erasure coding on the individual
apostles.

------
jcun4128
side note: what is that date format c.1515-20 it's in the Google & Arts
Culture link from this article

~~~
caymanjim
That just means "circa ['around'] 1515-1520 [CE]".

~~~
jcun4128
oh thanks, I thought it meant date the post was created so I was trying to
figure out how to match that date to now/near now... makes more sense.

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tigerbelt
<3 Art ... boo open culture !

Good culture > open culture

Thanks Omar!

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matthberg
This is a blog post summarizing another blog post [1] about a page [2] from
Google Arts and Culture with the images itself. If possible, it would probably
be better to update the URL to one of the other pages, as this one does not
add much additional information.

1: [http://www.openculture.com/2020/06/an-immaculate-copy-of-
leo...](http://www.openculture.com/2020/06/an-immaculate-copy-of-leonardos-
the-last-supper-digitized-by-google.html)

2: [https://artsandculture.google.com/story/explore-the-last-
sup...](https://artsandculture.google.com/story/explore-the-last-
supper/sAKCB2AzvHUmKQ)

~~~
dang
Ok, changed from [https://kottke.org/20/06/leonardo-the-last-supper-
gigapixel-...](https://kottke.org/20/06/leonardo-the-last-supper-gigapixel-
image). Thanks.

------
jlarcombe
"Table for 26 please." "But there are only 13 of you." "Yes, but we're all
going to sit on the same side."

