{ feuilleton }

Albrecht Dürer’s Self-portrait of 1498 as revealed by a new collaboration between Madrid’s Prado Museum and Google Earth. Google has photographed a number of the Prado’s paintings in ultra-high resolution, allowing users of their atlas application to examine the pictures to a degree which the artists themselves wouldn’t have experienced without the use of a magnifying lens. This must be the first time it’s been possible to scrutinise the actual brushstrokes of an online reproduction; screen grabs below show a zoom into Dürer’s right eye. So far only 14 paintings have been given this treatment but among them is the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. It’s worth downloading Google Earth simply for the opportunity to lose yourself in that work’s fantastic tableaux.