The zoom never seen before is on a Rembrandt masterpiece: it seems to rest your nose on the canvas

Every little detail, every single crack in the color of the Night Watch, Rembrandt’s painting from 1642, are visible thanks to the extraordinary digital version of the painting made by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A 717 Megapixel image that is in fact the largest and most detailed digital reproduction of a work of art, visible for free on the museum’s website.

The Night Watch is one of the main attractions of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A huge work that was originally even bigger. In 1717, in fact, the Night Watch was cut because there was not enough space on the wall intended to house it, between two doors of the Amsterdam City Hall. The painting was thus deprived of a strip of 60 cm on the left, one of 7 cm on the right, one of 22 cm at the upper end and one of 12 cm at the lower end. These four pieces, once eliminated, disappeared into thin air and never found again.