Staff of the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, Italy made an ultra-high-definition image of the fresco The Last Supper with 16 billion pixels and uploaded it to the Internet on the 27th, allowing people to see this immortal work by Leonardo da Vinci without going out of their homes.
Alberto Artioli, abbot of the monastery, said that the high-definition picture gave viewers a sense of being there and allowed experts to study the details of this fresco, including the traces left by Leonardo da Vinci when he sketched on the wall before painting it.
"You can not only see how Leonardo da Vinci processed the cup on the dining table in the painting to make it bright and clear," Artioli said, "but you can also see the degree of fading of the mural paint."
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper on the wall of the monastery. Since he used a mixture of oil paint and egg tempera instead of the fresco paint widely adopted in the Middle Ages, the paint on the picture was more likely to fall off. Therefore, staff had to cover the painting with curtains in 1999 to slow down its "aging".
The painting was reopened to visitors this year after restoration. However, the monastery has taken strict protective measures. For example, only 25 visitors are allowed to enter the yard every 15 minutes to appreciate the painting, and they must go through some filtering devices to reduce the erosion of the fresco by dust and other pollutants.