IT and Culture: Renaissance masterpieces launched online

An Italian company jointly with Uffizi Gallery has produced online images that will allow people around the world, taking a keen interest in the Renaissance, to examine several classic works of Italian art in a remarkable detail, for instance Caravaggio’s “Bacchus” of Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”.

All pictures have been digitized with a high level of resolution 28 billion-pixel per inch, so that works can be zoomed in up to one hundredth of a millimeter.

The Italian company first experimented with Leonardo’s “Last Supper” which went online in 2007. The resource has an immense popularity and now its creators are planning to create a complete virtual archive of the Uffizi’s collection.

Organizers claim that the goal of the project is to inspire trips to actual museums, and not substitute them. For those who can’t afford this, such virtual galleries is perhaps an only chance to see reproductions of Renaissance masterpieces in such a high quality.