
Most detailed ever photograph of The Night Watch goes online - Someone
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/most-detailed-ever-photograph-of-the-night-watch-goes-online
======
lovasoa
For those who would be interested in downloading the picture, or other images
using the same technology, I maintain a set of opensource zoomable image
downloaders :

\- dezoomify :
[https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify)
(a browser-based tool that recreates the image as an HTML5 canvas. Limited by
the maximal size of canvases in browsers)

\- dezoomify-rs : [https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-
rs](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-rs) (a command-line utility that can
download larger images, including the one presented in this post)

\- dezoomify-extension: [https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-
extension/](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify-extension/) (a browser
extension that finds zoomable images in web pages and allows downloading them
with dezoomify)

If you are passionate about high-resolution art and know javascript or rust,
you can come contribute !

~~~
mgraupner
Thank you very much for creating this tool. I once looked into into doing the
same but lost interest. Really great to get some Egon Schiele in high
resolution format!

One suggestion: Print out WHERE the image is saved after downloading, I had a
hard time realising it's sitting in the root of my home folder...

~~~
lovasoa
In dezoomify-rs, the place where the file is saved is displayed when the file
is downloaded.

In dezoomify, the application cannot know where you saved the picture, since
the browser does not share the location of the download folder with webpages.

~~~
mgraupner
dezoomify-rs shows the following message (MacOS): "Saved the image to Kneeling
Girl_ Resting on Both Elbows - Egon Schiele.jpg"

No folder/path visible here.

~~~
schoen
Perhaps it's relative to the application's current working directory?

~~~
mgraupner
Binary is in ~/Downloads/dezoomify-rs/, image was saved in ~/.

~~~
lovasoa
It is relative to the current working directory, which is not necessarily the
same as the directory the binary is in. We could display the full path,
though. Interested in making a PR ?

------
unwind
That museum really is a treasure, and well worth a visit if you're ever in
wonderful Amsterdam. Not right now I guess what with the crowds and
everything, but hopefully this too shall pass.

I think it's really funny that the always-pedalling Dutch included a bike lane
_through_ the museum [1], that feels very right and also quite unique.

[1] [https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/the-bicycle-
pa...](https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/the-bicycle-passage-of-
the-amsterdam-rijksmuseum/)

~~~
trm42
Also, for some reason this art piece looks better live than on paper or on
screen. It may have something to do with its size and how eye handles it live.

~~~
ghaff
There is an impact of very large paintings that you definitely lose in a
photograph. It's not that such paintings are only good because they're big.
But viewing a painting that fills a wall is just a different experience from
looking at even a much smaller version of the same scene. This is probably
especially true with large figure groupings like The Night Watch.

~~~
lisper
The visceral sensation of seeing something big can only be produced by a live
viewing: think of seeing the grand canyon live vs seeing a photo of it, even a
very high quality one.

~~~
jcl
Surprisingly, your visual perception of something can actually be affected by
how big you think its image is, even if it is _not_ live.

The "vertical-horizontal illusion" is an optical illusion where a vertical
line appears to be longer than a horizontal line of the same length. It turns
out that this illusion is more pronounced in larger images, even if the image
has the same content. In fact, some researchers used monocular VR to show that
your perception of horizontal vs. vertical scale can be altered just by making
you believe that the image you are viewing is scaled to a TV vs. a movie
theater screen -- even when you are constrained to view exactly the same
pixels in both cases.

I have a pet theory that this may be why film stars thought that TV cameras
"added ten pounds"... Viewing a face at smaller-than-life size could make you
perceive it as a little more squat than it really is.

(I learned this from a talk by Dennis Proffitt... might be from this paywalled
article:
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/p3053](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/p3053)
)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical%E2%80%93horizontal_il...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical%E2%80%93horizontal_illusion)

------
dazzawazza
A long time ago I worked on a series of CDROMs detailing Vermeer's Chick with
the Pearl Earring (unofficial name) and Bellini's Feast of the Gods.

We included infra-red, x-ray and colour information and overlayed them. Users
could scroll around the surface of the paintings in great details looking at
how the artist constructed their work. The tech we used was previously used to
render 3D globes with overlayed information. I think you could only buy the
CDROMs at the Washington Museum of Art.

At the time it was pretty ground breaking and I certainly enjoyed working on
it. It's amazing to think that this is all free on the web now at massively
high resolutions.

~~~
xbryanx
Why do you have to use derogatory language to describe Vermeer's Girl with a
Pearl Earring?

~~~
Chris2048
Chick is "informal + sometimes offensive"

~~~
bityard
Offense is taken, not given

~~~
snypher
So why take offense to this? Explained above that the unofficial name is used
as a term of endearment, and obviously not used in a demeaning context.

I can't imagine self-censorship to avoid offending a painting.

~~~
dazzawazza
Even better, the young woman in the painting isn't a girl and she isn't even
real. It's all imagined by Vermeer.

No one minds that she is called a 'girl' when she is most definitely a young
woman even by today's standards and most definitely by the standards of the
day.

All of this was 20 odd years ago though, for me, when the term chick was much
more widely used in both the US and UK.

~~~
Cogito
> the young woman in the painting... isn't even real

There is some evidence that Vermeer could have been using optical tools to
create his photo-realistic paintings.

If so, she would have been a real person, as that is how the technique is
imagined to work - use an optical apparatus that allows you to see your
painting and the subject in the same view, and then paint so that they blend
into each other.

A pretty cool documentary was made about this called Tim's Vermeer[1]
(starring Tim Jenison and directed by Penn & Teller), and led to an
installation at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania.
Really interesting, and well worth experiencing both!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer)

------
creativeembassy
Nerdwriter has an excellent video explaining the painting in detail. I'm
excited to rewatch this while being able to view the painting in even greater
detail.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8f64yj1Jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8f64yj1Jk)

------
fjcp
Amazing! Both the art and the way they implemented this visualization. I'm
using a modest machine and had it freeze before when opening large resolution
images on the browser, so I thought that would be the result when I opened
this link. To my surprise it worked smoothly and efficiently.

~~~
colinprince
Don't miss also [http://boschproject.org/](http://boschproject.org/)

which uses the hyper-resolution.org technology with the works of Hieronymus
Bosch, adding super high-res images beyond visible light, with a "curtain"
effect.

Hard to explain but fascinating stuff.

------
stevesimmons
For a really interesting background to the painting, see [1].

The painting originally had no name. A 1715 copy gave it the name "Officers
and other civic guardsmen of District II of Amsterdam, under the command of
Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch". A 1797
engraving added the nickname "Night Watch".

So today, the painting's preferred full name is [2] in Dutch:

* "Officieren en andere schutters van wijk II in Amsterdam onder leiding van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch, bekend als de ‘Nachtwacht’"

and in English:

* "Officers and other civic guardsmen of District II of Amsterdam, under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, known as the ‘Night Watch’"

[1] [https://jhna.org/articles/amsterdam-civic-guard-portraits-
wi...](https://jhna.org/articles/amsterdam-civic-guard-portraits-within-
outside-new-rijksmuseum-part-ii/)

[2]
[http://www.getty.edu/cona/CONAFullSubject.aspx?subid=7000018...](http://www.getty.edu/cona/CONAFullSubject.aspx?subid=700001886)

------
HenryBemis
WHOAH!!! I clicked (zoomed), and I clicked and I clicked and I clicked (8
times). At some point around the 6th-7th clicked I actualy said "WHOAH" out
loud and people around me looked at me. Now that is magnificent. I've seen the
painting inthe Rijks museum some years back. It is simply amazing.

Edit: remember when you want to see a painting from really up close.. and they
don't let you? It's like looking at the painting with a magnifying glass!

------
Fifer82
What do you think this red splodge is? It looks like someone was like "oops i
got red paint on the masterpiece" and not part of it.

[http://hyper-
resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.480,0.002&r=...](http://hyper-
resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.480,0.002&r=0.5004,0.3507,0.0075,0.0037&i=Rijksmuseum/SK-C-5/SK-C-5_VIS_20-um_2019-12-21)

~~~
davidg109
A freckle

------
Daub
Little know fact: this painting was cropped a significant amount on one edge.
I suspect it was the left edge.

The reason it was cropped... to fit into a room.

~~~
Someone
Mostly from the left, but also from the top, right, and, least, from the
bottom
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch#Location_and_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch#Location_and_alterations))

We know because there’s a 17th century copy in London:
[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gerrit-
lundens-...](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gerrit-lundens-
after-rembrandt-the-company-of-captain-banning-cocq-the-nightwatch)

~~~
Daub
AH! I did not know that. Thanks. I had only assumed the left. Many years as an
art teacher gave me a sixth sense to detect when a painting has been cropped.

------
kuon
This is great and the technical implementation (browsing large image) is good.

But I must be getting old, I didn't see the "See the photograph" button at
first, I read the article, came back here to look for a link, realized people
where commenting about it so I must have missed it, went back, looked at my
screen for nearly a minute to finally see the button.

~~~
colinhowe
I'd say that's just awful UI. Looks just like a normal header for a block of
text.

------
seemslegit
> The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of
> neural networks.

I can totally see how that went down:

Engineer: We really don't need neural networks to do that.

Project person: <Angry look>

Engineer: One image-stitching "neural" "network" coming right up, do you want
it "deep-learned", "convolutional" or both ?

------
ec109685
Some more details about the painting, “10 things you may not know about
Rembrandt’s Night Watch”: [https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijks-
stories/10-things-night-...](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijks-
stories/10-things-night-watch)

------
jacquesm
If this sort of thing interests you have a look at:

[https://picturae.com/en/](https://picturae.com/en/)

~~~
Daub
I am interested in the software used to process the many images required for
this kind of documentation. I heard that it behaves more like a spreadsheet
than a traditional photo editor.

~~~
jacquesm
Picturae's workflow software is second to none that I've seen in the field,
they did a very good job. Also, their color calibration hardware/software
combination is top notch and that really is a great thing to have when you are
in the archival business. They also know how to handle valuables. Highly
recommended.

------
transitivebs
[https://github.com/openseadragon/openseadragon](https://github.com/openseadragon/openseadragon)
for anyone interested in how this was implemented

------
gonzo41
I really hope we get more of this type of content from other museums. It's
fantastic to be able to have that much detail. We really need something like
this on a CDN like google maps almost.

~~~
jmkd
Here are 1847 of them, on a CDN that is almost like Google Maps.
[https://artsandculture.google.com/project/gigapixels](https://artsandculture.google.com/project/gigapixels)

------
tobylane
Related: The Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent has put up a highly detailed
photograph of the Ghent Altarpiece at
[http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be](http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be)

This review talks about the birds outside you can only see with zooming in
many times [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/julian-
bell/kestrel-...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/julian-bell/kestrel-
burgher-spout)

------
fjfaase
I hope they have used proper lightning when taking the photographs, because
the type of lightning in the exhibition hall (where the painting is still
standing) is rather poor, due to the so-called daylight LED lamps, that
however have a poorly defined spectrum not matching true day light conditions.
This causes the red colors to look rather pale and shows some colors as
different, probably due to different combinations of pigments that look the
same under daylight, but now appear different.

~~~
robbyking
These types of comments always get under my skin. They took a 45 gigapixel
photo of a 350-year-old Rembrandt, I'm pretty sure they didn't shoot it in the
exhibition hall using "so-called daylight LED lamps."

~~~
whoisjuan
Dude. Here is a photo of the setup. They didn't move it.

[https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/nightwatch](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/nightwatch)

Edit: Here is an actual video ->
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B00YJ7tFbyB/](https://www.instagram.com/p/B00YJ7tFbyB/)

~~~
Hinrik
As can be seen there, they of course relied on their own lighting as is
standard for archival and studio photography.

------
jmkd
Almost a decade since the first gigapixel of this painting went online[1], and
they've gone from about 14 gigapixels to 44, which in layperson's terms feels
like another zoom level.

The main difference is in the conservation work, lighting and post processing.

[1] [https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-night-watch-
remb...](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-night-watch-rembrandt-
harmensz-van-rijn/eQEojRwTdypUKA)

------
yread
Ah good old openseadragon. Such a great js library

------
syphilis2
My idea from decades ago, which I'd love to see implemented, is to capture the
height information of the painting and reconstruct it in the browser using
physically based rendering. Let the viewer decide what environment to put the
painting in, and be able to move around and inspect from every angle. That's
the biggest thing that's missing when looking at paintings online: there's no
depth and no setting. Some paintings literally shimmer from small dots of
glossy paint, others are heavily built up, I want that recreated online.

~~~
gxqoz
It's not in a browser per se but this New Yorker article from a few years ago
goes into how a company uses various high-tech scanners to create very
convincing reproduction of paintings that include their depth:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/the-factory-
of...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/the-factory-of-fakes)

------
coldcode
I can't even imagine how much time it took to paint something this detailed
and not make many mistakes. I wish we could see it as it was when it was
finished (clearly time has taken a toll).

~~~
HenryBemis
From documentaries I've watched there are plenty of changes/mistakes/cover-
ups, and they spot this with x-rays. I wouldn't be surprised that the same
would (or already is) discovered for this massive painting as well.

------
vixen99
I look forward to eventually seeing entire collections viewable online in this
way. For a variety of reasons which don't need detailing, huge numbers of
people will never ever have the opportunity to stand in front of great
paintings in collections across the world. It's also true that photographs
like this provide an experience not available or rarely available to those who
are able to visit collections in person.

------
solarized
Beautifully managed museum!. Web version is build seriously. The design,
collection, virtual tour inside the museum. Made me to visit this place
someday.

thanks for this!

------
mcv
You can zoom in way beyond what's reasonable. It's gorgeous, but better to see
the whole thing than the cracks in the individual brush strokes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Especially since it seems to need cleaning, badly. Dark, muddy, even the parts
that are meant to look illuminated (man in white, woman in back) are muddy.

~~~
Someone
FTA: “The second phase of Operation Night Watch, the restoration of the
painting, has been rescheduled due to the pandemic.”

They made this photograph to have a reference image.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Excellent! This work definitely deserves careful attention.

------
dekhn
Seeing this painting in person (completely alone during the period when the
painting was in an outbuilding during the Rijksmuseum renovation) completely
transformed my appreciation of art. It really doesn't translate well to the
photographed medium. I'm not sure my monitor can even represent the range of
illumination from the darkest to brightest spots.

------
chias
This is spectacular -- I suspect you can see at least as much as you'd be able
to see with your eyes if you were able to get arbitrarily close to it.

Does anyone know what the text says? Extracted as best I could here:
[https://i.imgur.com/iAsGPT8.png](https://i.imgur.com/iAsGPT8.png)

~~~
okmichael
The names of the people who paid for the painting. "Eighteen names appear on a
shield, painted circa 1715, in the center-right background, as the hired
drummer was added to the painting for free."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch#Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch#Commission)

~~~
chias
thanks!

------
sumfoni
That looks weird.

I did already see pictures made by google from Art galleries and you could
make out painting details (hair, color, hight of colors) but this does very
very smothed out even when zooming in completly. No details from the canvas.

Is that an issue i missread? Is it how they made the picture or is the canvas
really that smooth?

------
johnchristopher
Weird how this morning I was on their API page for an exercise/project I want
to tackle (I needed a realistic data source).

[https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/](https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/) You could build
out this for any of their objects in their collections.

------
thomk
Nerdwriter covered this expertly:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8f64yj1Jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8f64yj1Jk)

Nerdwriter is an amazing youtube channel where he does breakdowns like this of
all kids of art, film, celebrities, etc.

------
anotheryou
Any other sources like this?

I only know [http://boschproject.org/](http://boschproject.org/)

I would love to virtually stroll a museum this way.

~~~
gxqoz
If you have a university library account, ArtStor
([https://www.artstor.org/](https://www.artstor.org/)) is probably the biggest
resource out there for detailed paintings, although it's behind a paywall and
some images are better quality than others.

~~~
anotheryou
Looks amazing, sadly I don't.

~~~
gxqoz
Yeah I don't either anymore. However, ArtStor does let you create credentials
independent of a school account (once you've logged in with a school account
through the library). Thus, if you have someone who does have university
access you can have them make you an account without them having to share
their full university credentials with you.

------
celloductor
amazing. you can see a lot more than going to rijks as it's usually crowded
with people trying to see it... and you can't stand as close!

------
aaroninsf
It's a great painting,

but I'm admittedly a little disappointed the headline didn't refer to some
project around the Sergei Lukyanenko novel.

------
kozak
Interesting how the "crash test dummy" positional markers at the corners are
hand-drawn, not printed.

------
MrOxiMoron
still remember the museum night me and my brother in law where one of the
first people into the museum. we went to the nachtwacht right away and where
able to view it without anyone else in the room for a long time.

------
fortran77
With no IBC this year, their website is a good way to get my Dutch Master fix.

------
hypewatch
What’s the significance of “The Night Watch” artistically?

~~~
linksnapzz
From the Wikipedia: The painting is famous for three things: its colossal size
(363 cm × 437 cm (11.91 ft × 14.34 ft)), the dramatic use of light and shadow
(tenebrism) and the perception of motion in what would have traditionally been
a static military group portrait. The painting was completed in 1642, at the
peak of the Dutch Golden Age. It depicts the eponymous company moving out, led
by Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his
lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash).
With effective use of sunlight and shade, Rembrandt leads the eye to the three
most important characters among the crowd: the two men in the center (from
whom the painting gets its original title), and the woman in the centre-left
background carrying a chicken. Behind them, the company's colors are carried
by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen. The figures are almost life-size.

Rembrandt has displayed the traditional emblem of the arquebusiers in a
natural way, with the woman in the background carrying the main symbols. She
is a kind of mascot herself; the claws of a dead chicken on her belt represent
the clauweniers (arquebusiers), the pistol behind the chicken represents
clover and she is holding the militia's goblet. The man in front of her is
wearing a helmet with an oak leaf, a traditional motif of the arquebusiers.
The dead chicken is also meant to represent a defeated adversary. The colour
yellow is often associated with victory.

------
koheripbal
I found a small insect that has been painted over. It's only visible at the
max magnification. I saw it, but then lost it again when I closed the window.
Can anyone else see it?

~~~
Avalaxy
I don't, but I did find Waldo.

------
HPsquared
Ferris Bueller's Day Off

------
timwis
Jon Snow isn’t even in this wth

------
sneeuwpopsneeuw
As a dutch person it feels terrible to see the name of the art work translated
to English. The dutch know this art work as the "nacht wacht".

The tech behind this all is very impressive non the less.

~~~
efdee
Night Watch is a pretty spot on translation of "Nachtwacht". Why does it feel
terrible?

~~~
elliekelly
Not the person you’re replying to (and I don’t speak Dutch) but I hadn’t
realized the painting’s name rhymed in Dutch. Since I assume Rembrandt chose
the title of the piece deliberately it does feel like a certain _je ne sais
quoi_ is lost in the non-rhyming English translation.

~~~
mcv
Nacht Wacht was not the original title. It was originally called _"De
compagnie van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburgh
maakt zich gereed om uit te marcheren"_, which means "The company of captain
Frans Banninck Cocq en lieutenant Willen van Ruytenburgh prepare themselves to
go marching".

At the time it was controversial, because normally such militias standing in a
nice orderly fashion. Rembrand instead chose to paint this chaos, and
apparently the people who commissioned it weren't happy.

At some point two sides were cut off to make it fit in a smaller room, and
when it was rediscovered, it was very dark due to the many layers of old
varnish. There's where it got the name "Nacht Wacht". Restoration of the
painting made it a lot brighter again.

The name stuck, though. The original title is a bit cumbersome.

~~~
linksnapzz
Amusingly, that didn't stop Dutch prog-metal pioneer Arjen Lucassen from
entitling his musical tribute to this painting "The Shooting Company of
Captain Franz B. Cocq". You'd think "Night Watch" would be easier to fit into
a rhyme....

~~~
mcv
I will have to look that up. I only know 'Into The Electric Castle', 'Ambeon'
and a handful other things. I clearly have some catching up to do.

