The digital photo of Da Vinci Painting of the Last Supper is a whopping 16 billion pixel picture, to be posted on HAL9000's site, October 27th, at 9:30am CEST, the link will be listed at the bottom.
For those photo enthusiasts, the digital experts on the site, will also list the story of how the painting was photographed, along with the technical terms and tools used. For those interested in viewing Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' but may never make it to Italy, the details will be incredible, and I also believe it's possible to purchase a copy of the digital artistry.
Who? What? Where? When?
First things first.
There is a Digital Company in Italy, that has decided to promote appreciation for art, and accommodate the endless stream of visitors who now must make reservations at least a month in advance, to view the famous Da Vinci painting the Last Supper.
The actual, (original) painting can be viewed at the refectory of the domenican convent adjoining the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan Italy. With the delicate conditions of the mural, only 25 guests are permitted to view the painting, at 15 minute intervals. For ticket information on visiting Leonardo Da Vincis Last Supper, a link will be provided at the end of this article.
The digital firm, Hal9000, named after the super intelligent, and famous computer in the movie A Space Odyssey, are a group of photo restorationists, and masters of photography. They took on the difficult task of transforming the wall mural of Da Vincis Last Supper along with the gorges painting of esteemed Andrea Pozzo, who painted the Perspectiva, in 1685-1694, at the Sant'Ignazio di Loyola Church in Rome. They also have a few other digitally projected photos of famous paintings.
The Last Supper or otherwise known as Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena was painted commencing in 1494 and finally ending in 1498 under the rule of Ludovico il Moro, the original mural measurements are 15 x 29 feet (460 880 cm).
In this particular painting Leonardo decided to use a different method of painting from the normal methods used during that period, which was known as fresco painting. Fresco painting simply means that the artist paints on wet plaster, and Da Vinci decided to paint "a secco", on dry plaster, artists at that time rarely painted on a dry wall, due to the fact that it was difficult to seal the mural. Da Vinci compensated for that by applying different types of sealant, however, within a few years the painting started to deteriorate, and several attempts have been made to restore the painting, and methods of restoration has been improving.
The controversy created by Dan Browns the Da Vinci Code, created a grand interest in seeing the painting in Milan , and those aspiring to catch a glimpse for themselves, with curiosity of whether Mary Magdelene was really present in the painting, of the Last Supper, depicted by Da Vinci.
How did the genius team at HAL9000 manage these difficult tasks?
First of all the genius teams names are: Agostino Temporelli, Vincenzo Mirarchi and Mauro Gavinelli - HAL9000 S.r.l. - Novara, Italy.
The camera brand name of Nikon is posted on their site, for creating the clarity of these series of photos, it took careful planning and expert understanding of digital photography, along side of understanding light vs antique paint medium. In other words, the flash itself could cause damage to the image, so some parts of the photo may be slightly out of focus.
They reportedly used a Nikon D2x for the ultra high resolution composite of the murals, as in the fresco painting on the dome ceiling, the Perspectiva, created by Andrea Pozzo, the Sant'Ignazio di Loyola Church in Rome . The 9.85 Gigapixel digital photo is on their site, and the details are amazing to view. So much time and effort went into the taking of those shots.
Last February, the shoot for the Andrea Pozzo's painting at the Sant'Ignazio di Loyola Church in Rome took approximately 14 hours. They stitched the photos together, and piece by piece they shot around 1188 frames.
For the photographers reading this article, heres a little technical info, as mentioned they used the Nikon D2X, and Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED AF VR (set at 400mm on each frame) fixed to a Clauss Rodeon VR Head. They set the camera to NEF+JPEG; (JPEGs were used on site to monitor the progress,) while the NEFs were processed to 16-bit TIFFs through Capture NX. Key processing settings included Color Mode II and Adobe RGB.
For tickets to the refectory of the domenican convent adjoining the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, houses to view the extradinary mural of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, you can check out the Museum in Milan.
http://www.milan-museum.com/?gclid=CIjMxLeMrI8CFQ0_agod3SZrSA To view the gorges photo of the Perspectiva, painted by Andrea Pozzo, at the Sant'Ignazio di Loyola Church in Rome.
http://haltadefinizione.deagostini.it/ To view the Da Vinci Last Supper in 16 Billion pixels, tune in this Saturday, to HAL9000's site. Its interesting to see the photos on this site, it reminds me of google earth.
http://haltadefinizione.deagostini.it/ If you are having trouble viewing the website, it might be that your security settings are set high. Due to the coding in this site, active X controls by adobe may prevail your browser from viewing the entire site.
Source in part: HAL9000 website, Milan Museum, and encyclopedia research.
