The Paper's reporter Qian Chengxi reported comprehensively
In Rembrandt's work, we are probably most familiar with the collection of the National Gallery of the Netherlands' treasure "Night Watch". In fact, its official name was "The Second District Militia Company was ordered by Captain Bannin Kirk".
It was known to the public as Night Watch, and it came from a long-standing misunderstanding: by the end of the 18th century, due to the accumulation of dust and varnish, the color of the painting had dimmed so much that it was believed that the scene in the painting took place after dusk and had its current name. And what's even more striking is the fact that, thanks to a single cut, the public has never seen what the full Night Watch looks like in 300 years. Now, with the help of artificial intelligence, this rembrandt masterpiece has been fully reproduced.
The Pre-Restoration Night Watch, Rembrandt's Light Technique and Temporal Deposition Make the Painting Much Darker Than It Was When It Was Painted This illustration was provided by the National Gallery of the Netherlands
Rembrandt completed the masterpiece in 1642, when he was commissioned by Captain Bannin Kirk and 17 members of the militia company to paint it for the ballroom of their newly built conference hall in Amsterdam. This work is a veritable "big guy", 379 cm high and 453 cm high.
But 75 years later, when it was decided to move it to Amsterdam City Hall, city hall officials wanted to hang the painting between two doors, but the painting was too big to hang. So the painting was cut into small pieces — 60 centimeters from the left side of the painting, 22 centimeters from the top, 12 centimeters from the bottom, and 7 centimeters from the right side. The cut canvas is still missing.
In 2019, the National Gallery of the Netherlands launched a restoration project called "Operation Vigil" to restore missing parts of the painting. The project was based on a painting by Gerrit Lundens, a contemporary of Rembrandt's, who painted a copy of the original (also commissioned by art historians believe it was commissioned by Captain Kirk), which is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London. Although its size is much smaller than the original, it is a complete record of the footage content of the night watch and can be used as a visual reference copy.
A replica of Londens
However, the size of the replica is only one-fifth of the original, and there are many differences in color, technique, proportion, and position from the original. For example, experts have judged that he was sitting on the left side of rembrandt's work when he copied it, resulting in a difference in perspective.
Therefore, the repair work cannot directly enlarge the missing part. The expert's countermeasure is to use artificial intelligence algorithms to learn and train an intelligent neural network that can simulate Rembrandt's painting techniques, and then apply the neural network to the missing parts of the existing Night Watch on Lundens' paintings, simulate how Rembrandt is most likely to paint, and finally print out the output laser and reinstall it around the night watch. This is also the key to the completion of the entire restoration.
The restored screen is much brighter
On the project website, the public can see a series of videos that explain very well how the project was finally completed. First, the restoration team meticulously took two high-definition photographs of the original, down to the point that the size of the image document exceeded 51 megabytes. They then trained three neural networks — faces and bodies, colors, and painting styles — using a new technique of image processing artificial intelligence called convolutional neural networks. During training, Rondance's work was an input question, while Rembrandt's existing original work was an output answer, which was finally recognized by experts.
Tucker Dibitz, director of the National Gallery of the Netherlands, explained the process further to The Guardian: "We made three types of algorithms: one was to list perspective deformations and correct them; the second was to identify the color scheme of the original work and project it into the missing part; and the third was to learn Rembrandt's brushstrokes. The resulting work is printed proportionally. ”
The original size of "Night Watch" is exhibited at the National Gallery of the Netherlands
The restored work not only increased the size of Night Watch, but also corrected the wrong perception of the painting caused by the wrong proportions caused by years of cropping.
"Before the restoration, Captain Kirk was in the center of the picture, but after the restoration, due to the improvement of the left and bottom of the picture, a new space was added to the picture, and you can see that the militia company members are actually moving to the left, which is Rembrandt's genius, he created a sense of dynamics in the picture." ”
The leftmost addition to the screen
In addition, three new characters were added to the bridge: two militiamen and a young boy, making Rembrandt's composition more complete. "It's great that we can now see the Night Watch that Rembrandt wanted to see," Debitz said.
Currently, the restored Night Watch is on display at the National Gallery of the Netherlands for three months until September. After the exhibition is over, the restored new part will not be on display.
Dibitz said he didn't want the public to misunderstand the restored painting as the true full picture of the original. If Rondens's reproduction is the artist's interpretation of Rembrandt's original, he said, the restored work is a "scientific" interpretation. Neither of these can replace Rembrandt's extant original Night Watch, and even then, he said, "it's the best way we can get to know the painting." ”
Editor-in-Charge: Ying Xu
Proofreader: Yan Zhang