HAL9000 released a 16,118,035,591-pixel digital image of “The Last Supper”
Last Saturday, HAL9000—a photography company offering services in art restoration, digital photo compositing, and scientific and macro imaging—released a 16-billion-pixel digital image of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” With it comes a tool to allow exploration of the great detail this project affords. Wired published a nice overview yesterday, including a slideshow of selected images.
The details of the photo shoot are amazing. There were 1677 shots taken from Nikon D2Xs on May 7, 2007. The computation required 16 GB RAM and 2 terabytes of hard drive space. The photographers also had to worry about their digital restoration work damaging the original work: “Great care has been adopted in the Last Supper illumination during shooting. Lighting system has been tested and validated in the Photometric Laboratory of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro not to damage the painting.”
One of the more interesting discoveries now made accessible to the online public is the scene taking place outside the window behind the head of Jesus. In person, the small church steeple and surrounding countryside are barely noticeable, if even visible to the naked eye. But with some magnification afforded by the HAL9000 project, it is clear that the artist took some care in visually describing the peaceful scene outside the room.
At 18% magnification, the church steeple behind Jesus’ head is clearly visible.
The most extreme close-up of the church steeple behind Jesus’ head.
Haltadefinizione also provides some context about the work and the artist who painted it. The popularized fresco was painted in the Santa Maria delle Grazie convent in Milan over four years, completed in 1498. The painting on display in Italy garners 350,000 tourist per year, helped somewhat by author Dan Brown’s popular book, The Da Vinci Code.
