108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

272 twalichiewicz 81 5/1/2025, 12:22:01 AM hirox-europe.com ↗

Comments (81)

cgriswald · 7h ago
When viewing this I was captivated by the girl's lips. In the full view, the bottom lip looks not just full and moist, but slightly wet. Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess with only a splash of white giving definition to the (anatomical) left of the girl's mouth.

In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is probably obvious already to many, the parallel between that and the way that we sort of do that when we look at paintings suddenly hit me.

roughly · 6h ago
If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks.

From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - both do an incredible job of putting you in a series of vivid, fantastical places within a paragraph or two of exposition.

dvt · 2h ago
> Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”

So wild seeing this referenced here, it's a pretty obscure book (of poetry nonetheless), and one my absolute favorites. Cheers to having great taste :)

PS: Small nit: it's "Italo," not "Italio."

te_chris · 2h ago
Likewise! I love this book
nandomrumber · 3h ago
Who’s that fella what did that TV show where he paints portraits of his famous guests.
TylerE · 2h ago
Absolutely. I was at the Virginia Museum of Art where they have several Monets and 3 Van Goghs. They also let you get quite close to them… less than a foot away in some cases. The amount of texture is incredible. (What also struck me in person, though I had read about it previously, is how tiny almost all Van Goghs are. Barely more than postcard size in some cases.
kylebenzle · 5h ago
I read a lot of sci-fi and because it's come up in recommendations I've tried two or three times to read that book, "This Is How You Lose the Time War".

The popularity of that book along with stuff like N.K. Jemisin winning "Best SciFi book" of the year 3 years in a row prove more than ever that the vast majority of people simply don't have taste in the sense they can not decide if they actually like something or not they can only like what other people like.

That book was objectively bad but it keeps showing up on the top of best sci-fi book lists for some reason and so a lot of people keep (mistakingly) thinking they liked it.

roughly · 4h ago
> objectively bad

Well that settles that, then.

fish_phrenology · 5h ago
It took a bit but by the end it had grown on me. I agree it's technically not great but maybe I'm just used to that from reading sci-fi, most of which feels technically bad. That said my reaction to the first quarter was mostly "uhh?". Big disagree on N.K. Jemisin though, I enjoyed reading those. Books 2 and 3 of the three body problem series feel like what you're describing to me. Never got why those were popular, the first one had the interesting cultural revolution flashback element but the sequels did almost nothing for me.

Filling-in-the-gaps-books wise, it's hard to do better than Earthsea in my mind. They're quite short books, yet I found myself far more engrossed in the world and the goings-on than some thousand page Sanderson tomb I snoozed through.

pests · 4h ago
> interesting cultural revolution flashback element

Interestingly this section either appeared in the beginning or somewhere in the middle depending on the translation/version (I forget how the distinction was made) due to it being so different from the rest of the book.

It was in the beginning when I read it years ago and I think it took a bit for its context to make sense but I also read many lost interest during it.

I enjoyed all the books. (spoilers incoming) I actually enjoyed the love story elements, how a star given to someone would play such an important role later. How he survived in the end and communicated the three fairy tales, and enjoyed each in turn. I've never seen a story span such a vast amount of time nor remember one that took us literally to the end.

eru · 3h ago
I already felt pretty annoyed with the first Three Body Problem book.

But a big part of the problem is that after looking into space colonisation etc a bit, the aliens in most alien invasion stories feel utterly stupid to me.

I can still live with 'War of the worlds': their aliens only come from Mars not from the stars, and I can suspend my disbelief over eg its theory of how the planets formed: it's just a fantasy world where outer planets formed earlier and are older.

But the Three Body Problem tries to be current-ish with modern technology. And its aliens have enough technology to just build orbitals or terraform Mars or so. Or just kill off all the humans from space with an orbital bombardment or a killer virus. Instead of whatever clunky and ineffective methods they use in the book.

I did like the start though, when things were still kept behind the curtain. Also the Cultural Revolution flashbacks, too.

War of the Worlds never lifts that curtain for sure. Everything stays fairly mysterious, and the narrative only gives us some limited speculation from the narrator who clearly has also only a limited view on things.

gilleain · 4h ago
Are you not confusing 'liking' a work with 'thinking it good'. I'm not sure what criteria go into your evaluation, but perhaps those criteria are different from the ones other people are using?
dripdry45 · 2h ago
Guh, NK Jemisin :Q I tried getting through a few chapters of three of her books and haven't felt so... Pushed? Talked at? Bored? Hadn't grimaced internally and externally as much with an author in a while.

They feel juvenile, trying SO hard. Using a different person perspective in one of them to hamfisted effect, as opposed to someone like Tamsyn Muir who integrates that device for good reason and to brilliant effect.

I gave NK a solid try and was appalled at how in the world anyone could think these are engaging.

michaelhoney · 3h ago
... or maybe it's not objectively bad, and you're bouncing off it for some reason?

Per the parent comment, it does a lot with very little. And it's heady and literary and beautiful. Not everyone is into that. But a lot of people are.

parrit · 1h ago
Your brain is analysing the light in the "room" when zoomed out and compared to that it looks moist. When you zoom in there is no reference. I think then the brain switches from "real scene" analysis to "abstract".

It is a bit like those illusions where one grey looks darker than the other, based on surrounding shadows in the image and what the brain assumes... but the RGB values are the same.

pcblues · 4h ago
Not sure if anyone here saw the movie Clueless, but a great quote was, "That guy is such a Monet. From a distance he looks great, but up close he's a real mess."
userbinator · 7h ago
Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess

The analog equivalent of pixelation.

jychang · 3h ago
More like the analog version of doing a FTT and looking at only the high frequency parts vs the low frequency parts.
cgriswald · 7h ago
It's like touching it with your eye, without the pain. I love the future.
HideousKojima · 7h ago
It's like the museum scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Cameron is staring super intently at the painting
amelius · 1h ago
Yes from a distance the lips look moist/wet, but the cracks in the paint make them look dry, up close.
cmehdy · 7h ago
We think that everything is made of things but we forget that everything is mostly made of nothing, and it's the gaps between things that make it all be.

See also: atomic size vs distance between atoms in any structure, on perceptual levels the visual saccadic movement and how much the brain fills in the gaps.

Nothing is quite something after all.

markovs_gun · 15m ago
I hate this phrase because how do you even define "made of nothing" or "gaps between" when talking about objects as fuzzy as electrons, and how would you define where something "is" or "isn't " other than interactions? If an electron cloud is interacting with another electron cloud why do we say that space is empty? Because the measured radius of an electron is so much smaller than we observe?
fcatalan · 4h ago
You can also see that the hanging yellow part of the headscarf, he just winged it, effective as it might be.

I paint as a sort of weekly ritual, just 2 hours every Wednesday evening, and did an inept copy of this as my first serious try. Months of staring closely at every little detail of it leave you in a sort of communion with the work and the artist.

One thing you quickly learn is that the old masters were "impressionists" too. If you overwork stuff trying to perfect every shape with hundreds of precise brushstrokes, you end up with a naive, infantile looking painting that feels "unpainterly".

Trying and failing to mimic that single quick brushtroke that fools the eye leaves you in awe, fully appreciating the mastery.

drob518 · 7h ago
Yep, I noticed the same thing and came to a similar realization.
lubujackson · 8h ago
I highly recommend the movie "Tim's Vermeer" about the likelihood that Vermeer used something like a lightbox to paint his paintings. Specifically, his ability to reproduce light and color is unmatched while he only had basic training as a painter and never let anyone see him work. A fascinating engineering problem to deduce how he might have accomplished this.
dewarrn1 · 7h ago
It's an appealing hypothesis, but there's some compelling evidence to the contrary [0]. I'm not an expert, but this could potentially fall under the heading of pop history or pseudohistory.

[0] https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4707

adastra22 · 6h ago
Watch Tim’s Vermeer. The camera obscura doesn’t work (for similar reasons as mentioned in the article). Don’t want to spoil it, but Tim comes up with a very low tech solution that fits all the evidence.
thatgerhard · 2h ago
"Generally, you don't take a fine precision machine tool [a lathe] and saw it in half... but power tools are made to be jury rigged." - Tim
y-curious · 6h ago
Thank you! I watched some clips on YouTube and I'm very impressed by Tim's technique's efficacy.
diego_moita · 7h ago
It isn't a bad hypothesis.

Many people speculate that the model for the "The Astronomer" and "The Geographer" was Leeuwenhoek, the creator of the first microscope. He was a close friend of Vermeer.

And the use of devices for helping in drawing was actually quite common in those times. Durer and Da Vinci made drawings showing these kind of devices.

noufalibrahim · 3h ago
It's a great science documentary though. His obsession, how he works towards it and the emotional effect the whole project has on him. Worth watching regardless of your opinion on the hypothesis.
vanderZwan · 3h ago
Side-rant: I just watched a clip[0] and I have to say something about the misrepresentation of the Hockney-Falco thesis[1] in it.

And when I say I have to I really mean that: I'm Dutch, tried studying physics, dropped out, switched to studying art, specifically photography (even built my own camera at one point), then in the first year of art school was introduced to the Hockney-Falco thesis, then went to the International Congress of Physics Students one last time to hang out with my friends, decided to give a talk on the topic, and ended up winning best talk of the conference. So I'm kind of obliged to Have Some Opinions on this topic.

The clip mentions the HF thesis as if Hockney introduced the notion that the Dutch painters in Vermeer's time used optical tools. That's... not what the thesis claimed. Johannes Vermeer lived in the 17th century[2]. As the clip (correctly) states, telescopes and mirrors were known to the Netherlands by then - in fact the earliest known records of a refracting telescope is from a failed patent application in the Netherlands in 1608[3].

From what I remember, the hypothesis that Vermeer used optical tools wasn't controversial even back in the mid-2000s, a decade before this film came out. While there was no direct proof, he did live in the right place and period to have been introduced to telescopes, and artists trying out new tools is obviously a thing that happened throughout history. Being secretive about his work was obviously also very suspicious. I recall that we also discussed how certain visual qualities of the painting suggested the use of optical tools - Vermeer's style was also just so noticeably different and photograph-like compared to his peers. To be clear, nobody thought this diminished the quality of Vermeer's paintings: he was still innovating and mastering his tools, and creating the beautiful paintings that he made still took tremendous skill.

However, what the Hockney-Falco thesis claims is that Early Renaissance painters like, say, Jan van Eyck[4] already used optical tools, centuries before telescopes and optical mirrors optics were introduced in Europe. We're talking 15th century onwards. And not only that, that this was secret knowledge hidden by the painter's guilds, of which no known record survives even though we have records of all the other painting techniques used. That's what makes it so controversial.

The hypothesis that there was a painter who lived during a time of great innovation in optical tools in the place where those innovations took place, then secretly used those tools to get a leg up on the competition is very plausible.

The suggestion that the entirety of Europe's Renaissance painters learned about optical tools from Arab lands but managed to keep this knowledge secret for centuries sounds like a conspiracy theory.

(also, it's completely ignorant of the realistic qualities of some of the old Roman art[5], and those painters definitely did not have high quality lenses available to them)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqWwuRnj3o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telescope

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_van_Eyck

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_art

MaxRegret · 6h ago
Steve Mould just released a video about the microscopy technique that was used to capture this 3D relief of the painting: https://youtu.be/o-dZKBwbsis
frainfreeze · 29m ago
Was it the same approach? The 3D relief has artifacts akin to ones produced by heightmaps
petargyurov · 2h ago
The microscope used for this is mind blowing. Falls squarely into the list of things I want but do not need.
koliber · 3h ago
When you zoom in on the cracks, you can see the bevel on the edge of the crack. That’s incredible.

In many places on the edges of the cracks in the dark background you can see tinges of blue or pink color. Is that from the lighting, or is the color actually there, if it is there, anyone have an idea why?

flir · 24m ago
I think I can see a repair on the left cheek? Line of lighter "filler" that seens to follow a crack?
lvl155 · 1h ago
Any work related to deconstructing these classic paintings? I’ve been thinking about an AI project where you basically analyze paintings based on brush strokes. The end result would be an animation of painting from blank canvas to completion.
fscaramuzza · 2h ago
Freak_NL · 1h ago
It's a beautiful painting.

I also can't stand the sight of it.

It has been abused as a kitchy backdrop on so much tat and assorted items — including wheelie bins, recycling bins, garden fences, pillows, phone covers, and posters — to such an extent that it just oozes bad taste by implication.

Poor girl.

louthy · 47m ago
I'm assuming you're in the Netherlands based on your NL suffix. Outside of the Netherlands it's rarely seen and so hasn't had the quite the abuse you state.

I still think it's an absolutely stunning work of art (regardless of whether Vermeer used camera-obscura or not).

geuis · 5h ago
This painting really needs some Baumgartner intervention.

There are hints of overpainting around the right eye (left side facing us). Background plus eyebrow. Too smooth, doesn't have the same crackle as the rest of the painting.

The veneer may be quite yellowed. Looking at the cloth on the top of the head over the blue fabric. Might originally be a bright white, but now appears yellowed due to exposure of the last veneer aging and yellowing under UV light.

BrandoElFollito · 4h ago
A man of culture I see :)

I watch his restorations with onesie, but his narrative (when it's not technical) is tiring because it wants to be fancy but it sounds fake to me.

His technical work looks great to me, I have no idea about conservation outside his videos. I heard that he got a lot of hate from conservators (which I do not understand) and actively fought critical comments on his videos (which I find petty).

It's been two weeks he has not uploaded anything and it is annoying :)

BTW I also watch cow hoof trimming and always wondered how many people have such weird lists of videos (art, hoof trimming, software dev, history, action movies, science, cooking, middle age, tables building, ...) - some I do a lit, some not (I saw a cow live twice)

Joel_Mckay · 4h ago
Keep in mind many painters of the day would intentionally distort the perspective to compensate for the viewing angle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homography

Beauty is complicated, and imperfection itself can form a timeless lesson:

https://sambourque.com/blog/kintsugi-beauty-in-imperfection

In many ways, some suggest it is an allegory for how people grow throughout their life... and for others it is just broken pottery.

Have a wonderful day, =3

perks_12 · 4h ago
The company behind this has a making of on YouTube: https://youtu.be/j_MvpMlgfwI?si=mK9LWleFBE8r_saz
eviks · 39m ago
Is there a similarly detailed remastered version without all those cracks?
todotask2 · 30m ago
The painting is now like a Google maps.
otherayden · 8h ago
Anyone know what they’re using to render this? Something like map tiles?
jer0me · 7h ago
Yes. This site seems to be using https://krpano.com, but https://openseadragon.github.io/ is an open-source alternative. The New York Times has used the latter for features like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/26/world/europe/...
gblargg · 4h ago
Props to them for not locking out older browsers as many sites are doing these days.
CodeCompost · 1h ago
When I visited the Mauritshuis when they were scanning it I managed to spot something looking like a Solaris workstation next to the scanner. I was kinda surprised to see it...
roflmaostc · 2h ago
There is a company doing the same for microscopy. Super large scale images of anything in the centimeter scale.

https://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery

djmips · 7h ago
I was immediately drawn to the faint text in the upper left. Meer I could read but it's the artist's signature. https://www.essentialvermeer.com/references/signatures/facsi...
lerp-io · 1h ago
needs a paintjob, its all chipping away
chrismcb · 6h ago
I'm amazed at how fast this is.
tehjoker · 4h ago
It's like Google Maps. I didn't look under the cover but typically the way these things work is there's a resolution hierarchy and it loads bits dynamically as you zoom in. The zoom here is a bit slow (it doesn't let you slam into the painting at warp speed) so there is likely a bit of latency hiding as it loads high res tiles.
londons_explore · 1h ago
The trick to make it super fast is to predict where the user might be viewing 1 second from now.

If an animation is in progress, that's an easy prediction.

If the user is using a mouse, they'll generally scroll or pan but not both.

If the user is on a touch screen, again the gestures are limited.

When you have your predictions, you start loading the those things.

psychoslave · 5h ago
I'm not versed enough in history of art to fully appreciate this painting and how it became so popular, could someone point me to some resources to improve my culture on the matter?

Thanks in advance for any reply

conductr · 5h ago
The artist is well known for his use of light/shadow in his works and is probably going to be the first bullet on any list. Also known for expensive pigments, an unknown style/methods , and being sloppy but extremely detailed depending on your vantage / distance. Zooming in on this one will highlight that
archiepeach · 3h ago
I very recently created an app that helps people learn art history.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/for-arts-sake/id6744744230

It’s a first version, and there’s a lot more content and features to come, but it’s actually already taught me so much making it!

sn0wleppard · 2h ago
John Berger's Ways of Seeing, I think it's all on youtube. There's also a book adaptation though I've not read that
happyraul · 4h ago
I can recommend The Story of Art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Art
BrandoElFollito · 4h ago
Thank you too from me. Ideally a youtube channel or channels
padjo · 2h ago
I thought it was cool. Then I saw the 3D button!
diego_moita · 8h ago
Saw this picture at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. There are a couple funny things about it:

* It is surprisingly small

* It is kinda "fuzzy" or "blurry", you can't detect too much brushwork.

* It is very expressive

But my favorite Vermeer is not this, it is View of Delft, also in the Mauritshuis. The colors, hues and textures on it are just amazing.

For Brazilians, a funny curiosity: Mauritshuis means House of Maurice. It is really the former residence of Maurice of Nassau (Maurício de Nassau), the governor of the Dutch colonies in Brazil. This museum also have some interesting works by Rugendas and other painters showing life in colonial Brazil and a very cool collection of puppets made with bread paste showing life in colonial Indonesia.

The Mauritshuis is a very good reason to visit The Hague. If you go there take a walk to the M.C. Escher museum too.

technothrasher · 46m ago
My favorite is The Little Street. (https://www.johannesvermeer.org/the-little-street.jsp). I just love the quiet calmness of it. I had a copy of it made from one of those cheap Asian oil painting places online (the frame I put it in cost me more than the painting!), and was surprised what a good job the artist did. When I went to Amsterdam a few years ago, I made a point to go see the real one. But I wondered how well I'd visually remember my copy in order to make a direct comparison to the actual painting. I remembered well enough to be blown away by the real one. As pleased as I am with me copy, it's definitely not the same.
djsavvy · 7h ago
bzhang255 · 6h ago
I feel obliged to point anyone interested to Proust on Vermeer: https://www.essentialvermeer.com/proust/proust.html
anigbrowl · 5h ago
It's worth a visit if you're in the Netherlands. Large parts of the town are the same as they've been for centuries.
quantadev · 1h ago
I knew everyone would immediately zoom into her mouth! If you look at the 3D view of it at a low angle it looks like the surface of Mars. Amazing.
bombcar · 8h ago
Why does "Details 90x" seem to zoom in more than "Details 140x"?
pfedak · 7h ago
The main image is all at the same 90x level, and those buttons just zoom in (more or less) all the way on the points, while the "140x" are separate scan patches at higher magnification (though the real point is they have 3D/height data, too).
Hobadee · 6h ago
Crap quality; I can't make out the individual atoms.
tehjoker · 4h ago
I half expected it to proceed to optical light microscopy or even scanning electron microscopy but the latter would have toasted the painting with radiation damage.
WalterBright · 8h ago
Ah, so beautiful!
Oarch · 30m ago
This is nowhere near enough pixels. I want at least trillion. Go back and try again!