In 1715, The Night Watch painting by Rembrandt was moved to the Amsterdam Town Hall but the movers ran into an immediate problem: the painting was too big to fit in its space. So the painting was trimmed, and the leftover pieces subsequently went missing and were never found again.
Fast forward to 2021, when art restorers were able to recreate the missing sections of Rembrandt's masterpiece with help of artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of a 17th century copy of the painting by Dutch painter Gerrit Lundens (who was known for making copies of old masters). Lundens' version showed the original, complete composition of uncut The Night Watch.
From The Guardian:
Lundens’ copy, painted within 13 years of the uncut original, was a passable one, but scientists working with the computers discovered he must have been sitting on the left side of the painting, creating distortions in perspective. He used slightly different mixes of paint and his work has aged rather differently to The Night Watch over time.
A relatively new technology known as convolutional neural networks, a type of AI algorithm that helps computers understand images, was able to correct all these failings when recreating the lost parts pixel by pixel. Crucially, the computers were able to learn how to reproduce the very strokes of Rembrandt’s brush, to ensure they are as close as possible to how the painting appeared three centuries ago.
Images: Pirosckha van de Wouw/Reuters
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