Google Art

Google Earth launches Prado Museum layer with high-resolution images of classic masterpieces

By Catherine Schwanke Posted 01.14.2009 at 4:35 pm 1 Comment

Google Prado Google Earth

Don’t have the time or money to fly to Spain to visit the famous Prado Museum in Madrid? No problem. Today, Google launches the Prado layer on Google Earth. Now you can view masterpieces like Velazquez’s The Maids of Honor or Rembrandt’s Artemis in high resolution.

Fourteen paintings are available for viewing, making the Prado Museum the first art gallery to allow access to it’s masterpieces in Google Earth. To provide high resolution viewing, each painting was photographed and contains up to 14,000 million pixels or 14 gigapixels. Translation? It means you can literally see the painter’s brush strokes. Google Earth also gives information about the painting, including the time period, dimensions and subject matter.

To make the visit even more realistic, the Google Earth Prado layer uses 3D imagery, allowing the viewer to move through the museum’s buildings. Now, when you have an itch to see Raphael’s The Cardinal, look no further than your desktop.