The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer is one of the most famous painting in the world. Science and art are now collaborating to try to know precisely the methods used by the painter. Mid-March, a scanning project on the Girl with the Pearl Earring in the Netherlands’ Mauritshuis museum came to an end.
During the “The Girl in the Spotlight”, Optosigma and Hirox Europe / Jyfel worked on a large motorized structure to support the Hirox digital microscope.
This high resolution scanning microscope has been used to acquire high precision 3D images of the surface of the painting. Thanks to technical imaging, we can know some painting details like the pigments Vermeer use to paint the blue headscarf or the pearl itself. Only a few millimeters separated the painting from the lens of the digital microscope which analyzed it during the 14 hours scan in order to create a 10 billion pixel scan! No place for mistake in this whole bridge structure!
A team of internationally recognised specialists were working within the collaborative framework of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science (NICAS). We hope science and art will continue to work together!