717-gigapixel Night Watch: Rijksmuseum publishes sharpest, most detailed photograph of a work of art

The Rijksmuseum has released the largest and most detailed photograph ever of a work of art: the Night Watch, Rembrandt ’s masterpiece featured in the long and elaborate Operation Night Watch project. In fact, the project’s research team managed to produce an extremely detailed 717-gigapixel photograph, making it possible to further magnify the Night Watch’s tiny pigment particles and see even the smallest details.

This photograph has a resolution of 717 gigapixels, or 717,000,000,000 pixels. Each pixel represents an area of 5 micrometers or 0.005 square mm, and the complete composite image is composed of 8,439 individual photographs measuring 5.5 cm x 4.1 cm. The team used a 100-megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS camera.Artificial intelligence was used to join these smaller photographs together to form the final large image, with a total file size of 5.6 terabytes.

“Making this image was a big challenge,” commented Robert Erdmann, lead researcher at the Rijksmuseum. “Many people thought it was impossible, but we outdid ourselves.” "The researchers working onOperation Night Watch have once again managed to push the limits of what seemed impossible," added museum director Taco Dibbits. "This achievement will greatly simplify the work on the Night Watch. In January, the conservation phase ofOperation Night Watch will begin."

This new image allows the researchers involved to study the painting from a distance in even greater detail. It will also allow future aging processes to be monitored with even greater accuracy. This photograph is so sharp that neural networks can now be used to quickly detect similar pigment particles or identify metal soaps, for example, which was not possible using the previous photograph, the one posted on the museum’s website in May 2020 that measured 44.8 gigapixels. To ensure each image was in focus, it was first necessary to scan the surface of the painting using lasers and calibrate the camera very accurately; after each photograph was taken, a neural network was used to check the color and sharpness of the image.

Image: Rembrandt, The Night Watch (1640-1642; oil on canvas, 363 x 437 cm; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)

717-gigapixel Night Watch: Rijksmuseum publishes sharpest, most detailed photograph of a work of art

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