Scala in Florence, with its 50-year history and the biggest printed art archive in Italy, has put all its energy into creating this digital art archive, published around the world simultaneously in four languages: English, French, Italian and Japanese.
From the second half of the thirteenth century through to the early seventeenth century, 506 artists took an active part in what is widely termed the Italian Renaissance.
Their main art works here contain 8000 art pieces in all, which displayed with a maximum of 10,000 by 7,500 pixels (more than 20 times the resolution of high vision) represent the absolutely highest definition that can be seen.
| It is as if everything appears right there before your eyes. You can see such detail that even the touches of the brush strokes are visible. |
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The art historian Roberto Longhi is known to have concluded upon seeing the angel above the right shoulder that Masolino's masterpiece, Madonna and Child with St. Anne, in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, had in fact been painted by Masaccio. Using the enlarged digital image we can indeed recognize that the angels on the left and right are the work of two different hands. The one on the right reveals the strong touch of Masaccio, with its flowing locks of hair and a momentary flash of light. According to Longhi, this one art piece represents a transformation in the quality of art, signaling its great leap into the Renaissance. |
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With the latest technology, a new window opens into art appreciation and research. From cracks that have appeared over the years, it is possible to decipher not only the way art pieces have been preserved, but also the drawing techniques that existed at the time. |
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Compare Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Musée du Louvre) and Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child with Two Angels (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence). One can observe each of the images, enlarge the places in the paintings with the greatest detail, and set them side-by-side for comparison. Lippi's Madonna reveals a relatively deep vertical crack in the area from the brow to the forehead. Accordingly, the contraction of the surface of the painting is clearly visible with the passage of time because it has affected the paint deep beneath the surface, and thus definitely seems in need of fixing. On the other hand, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa displays a number of cracks around the cheeks and forehead, but these are relatively much smaller, more variable and expand radially. Of course, the Mona Lisa's surface coating of paint has shrunk. Even so, compared to Lippi's work, the Mona Lisa does not reveal deep cracks. The question then is where these differences come from. Simply put, it is not just a question of preservation. The Mona Lisa's complex cracking shows us that during the painting process, the paint was applied in layer after layer. This so-called Sfumato painting style thus reveals that Leonardo da Vinci must have been inquiring into the effects of light. |
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