Supposedly the highest definition digital picture in the world. Constructed after a 20 year restoration of the work.
The latest cleaning, which began in 1979 and lasted 20 years, made great gains in revealing color and detail, but a more thorough cleaning could destroy the work beyond recognition.
The gains and losses are now visible on an Internet close-up, following the posting of a 16-billion-pixel image of the work. The image, 1,600 times more detailed than those taken with a 10-mega-pixel digital camera, is the world’s highest definition photograph, says Mauro Gavinelli, the project’s technical supervisor.
The image is visible at www.haltadefinizione.com and allows art lovers to view details of the 15th-century painting as though they were inches away from the work.
Gavinelli and his team at HAL9000, a company specializing in art photography, put together 1,677 panoramic images of the 15-by-29-foot depiction of the moment when Jesus tells his Apostles that one of them will betray him.
The resulting images will be used to monitor the state of the painting’s degradation. Meanwhile, they have already revealed unknown details, said Gavinelli.
“For example…a close-up reveals the gold flake Leonardo applied, despite believing that artists should be able to make paint glitter like gold,” Gavinelli told Discovery News.
Other close-ups show how Leonardo made the transparent cups, the church bell tower and shrubs outside the windows, and the patterns and wrinkles in the tablecloth – including a tiny peacock “embroidered” into it.
For those who can’t get enough of the enigmas surrounding da Vinci and his work, there couldn’t be a better tool.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/11/09/last-supper-da-vinci.html