Dreaming to see the Hermitage’s impressionist collection but wary of catching a cold in a St. Petersburg winter blizzard? Longing to commune with Rublev’s icons in the Tretyakov Gallery but daunted by the expense of travel to the Russian capital?
Now art lovers anywhere can realize their dreams of getting a closer look at major collections world wide. Announcing its Art Project yesterday, Google now offers a virtual tour inside 17 world-class art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the palace of Versailles in France and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Russia is very honorably represented by Google’s virtual tour of The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov State Gallery in Moscow.
The site provides breathtaking, super-high definition views of famous works as well as more than a thousand other images by more than 400 artists. Each work is rendered using gigapixel photocaturing technology: one can get close enough to examine a painter’s brushstrokes or the cracked varnish of a painting.Art Project has been integrated into Google Maps. Virtual collectors can, for example, find the Hermitage on the map of Russia and get inside with just a mouse click.
Google made its first incursion to the heady world of the fine arts two years ago when they gave us a selection of masterpieces from the Prado in full-screen as well as a 3D reproduction of the museum floor plan.
Illustrations: Detail from “The Holy Trinity” (Svyataya Troitsa), Andrey Rublev, 1425-1427; Hermitage inside view.
