Here’s Tim’s description of how he created the new images, which I hope you’ll agree, are spectacular:

The camera used to take the image was a Hasselblad H2d with a 39 mega pixel multi-shot back. The multi-shot shoots five separate times for each exposure with the color filter array shifting one pixel each time (one preview and then Red, Green 1, Green 2, Blue). Since each pixel has all the color data the processing does not require an algorithm to interpolate the missing information. This results in not only better color fidelity but also a significant improvement in clarity and detail. The lighting was with studio strobes with polarization on both the lights and on the camera lens to keep any reflection off the surface of the painting to a minimum.

Even though the camera captures a very large image with each exposure (about 250 MB) we soon realized that to get the detail we wanted it would require stitching together multiple images. Ultimately the painting was shot in a grid of 20 images (five across and four down). The biggest challenge was the precise movement and alignment of the camera for each shot. The use of a heavy duty studio camera stand made it possible to shift the camera with the degree of accuracy needed (though getting the studio stand, and all the other equipment, into the residence proved to be challenge in itself). The raw files were converted to TIFF and then assembled using a stitching software. The program gets the final image close but I have found that there is still a lot of minor tweaking, alignment and adjustment needed to have all the pieces fit perfectly. Also, in spite of the polarization, with such high magnification any flaws or dirt in the varnish are very apparent and I spent quite a bit of time in Photoshop digitally “cleaning” the painting. The painstaking work paid off with the resulting final image measuring 24,000 x 16,300 pixels (a 3 gigabyte file). At screen resolution that is like looking at an image 27 feet wide by 18 feet high. As my wife Diane pointed out, that is as if you were viewing a life size version of the actual gallery!

The one thing I find most amazing is the degree of detail that can be seen even with such extreme enlargement. Clearly, nothing depicted in the painting is there without careful consideration and everything must be considered a clue to its meaning.

Having spent the time going over the image in great detail, there are a few observations that we hope you find interesting. These may all be ground that has already been covered and, if so, please forgive our novice enthusiasm. If, on the other hand, we have uncovered some previously un-noticed clues we will have all been rewarded.

The perspective of the central tabletop does not match the rest of the painting – it appears to be tilted forward compared to the rest of the surfaces. This may have just been “cheating” perspective as a way to more easily show all of the objects, but it is curious. This follows through to the medallions which are almost perfectly round (ie: viewed as if seen straight down).

Of all the paintings shown in the gallery (I count 30), just a few have curtains that can be drawn to cover them – most notably the Triumph of Bacchus and Apelles Painting Campaspe. There are curtains flanking Perseus with the Head of Medusa and The Death of Lucretia but no drawstring is depicted so they may or may not close. Using curtains in a gallery may have been common practice but was it done to protect more valuable paintings or to hide them from view depending on the company? Either way it seems to indicate special importance to those particular paintings.

The clocks on each of the two side tables are set to 8:10. Could it be that the overall painting refers to an astronomical or historical event and a very specific moment in time – such as a birth or death which might have caused the “death” of the central female figure (Diane and I believe that her skin color indicates she is dead – not just resting…). Can any of the other instruments depicted be read to define a specific date – not just a time of day? For example, is the Celestial globe set to a particular and discernible day or can something more specific be read in the astrological chart?
In the dark corner by the Perpetuum mobile is a kneeling nude male figure (you will see this better in the enhanced image). This does not appear to be a statue – if it were it would be on a base or pedestal – without a base it would be too top heavy to support itself in this position. If that is the case, then this would introduce a third living (or recently deceased) person into the gallery. Could it relate to the door being ajar? Is he hiding or kneeling before and paying homage to Drebbel’s machine?

Finally, in the double portrait the patron (Linder) and the artist have in front of them a perspective sketch of the final painting but from their point of view it is upside down. It is less like they were studying it and rather more like they are presenting it to us (and Diane notes that even their gaze is outward rather than at each other or the drawing). Not only that, but the patron is pointing with his index finger to a very specific spot in the composition. If you look in that location in the finished painting it is the bookshelf with the book by Euclid. In the enhanced image I am sending you can read some of the other titles which may be telling. Do any of those titles have meaning or could there be a clue that is cryptographic (perhaps an anagram)?

I will be very interested to hear of any new insights into the painting that may result from the new image. You can also assure my fellow fans of Lost that I have seen the painting and it is real!

Three conversing figures, detail from Windsor drawing

Gorman: I suppose a fundamental question remains: what is the relationship between this drawing and this painting? Because the drawing, I think, clearly is before the painting. You know, these are sketches and so on, and it’s clearly very closely related to the picture — it doesn’t seem to be a completely independent work. But the drawing, as you can see, is more conventional — it has the same octagonal table, it has the globe, but it has the more conventional picture of three connoisseurs conversing around a table, it has a dog — it is more in the traditional genre of gallery interiors.

Cordover: And I would argue that two of those cognoscenti are easily identifiable.

Marr: Yes.

Cordover: I think that the figure on the right is almost identical to a self portrait by Peter Paul Rubens.

Marr: Yes, I would say that.

Cordover: And the figure on the left I think is also identifiable . . . .

Gorman: As Peter Linder?

Marr: Yes I think it is Peter Linder.

Cordover: Do you think so?

Gorman: Yes. And I also have a guess about who the figure in the middle is.

Cordover: That’s extraordinary.

Gorman: I saw it this afternoon. I think it’s Van Dyck, who was working in the Rubens studio from 1618 to 1620.

Cordover: Now that you’ve said it, it conjures up that portrait of Van Dyck that does look just like this.

Gorman: But if it is van Dyck, think about the drawing, — I think the drawing is memorializing a visit.  Perhaps Linder went to Antwerp for business between 1618 and 1620, and this was a visit where he met Rubens and van Dyck, and this is where the idea of him commissioning a gallery painting originated, and then this drawing was developed, possibly brought by Jan Brueghel the Younger to Milan. Then Linder and Oddi developed a more complex version of the composition and brought in the allegory, the deep mathematical content and the Kepler connection and so on and then that led to the painting. It’s just an idea.

Cordover: Van Dyck went to Milan with Jan Brueghel the Younger, his close friend, in 1622.

Weschler: The painting is painted in Antwerp or in Milan?

Gorman: The painting could have been painted in theory in either, but it was definitely painted by an Antwerp painter and they didn’t tend to stick around in Milan for long enough to do much, so it seems more likely that it was painted in Antwerp but commissioned perhaps on the basis of a visit to Milan.

Weschler: How could they have worked from Milan? There are the Alps in between…

I don’t think this is quite right.  Obelisks were, in fact, rather common in northern architecture of the period, featuring regularly in formal gardens.  For example, Robert Dudley’s garden at Kenilworth(visited by Elizabeth I in 1575) was divided into four quarters, each of which had an obelisk in the centre, “rising pyramidically fifteen feet high” with an orb “of porphyry” on the top.  So, we shouldn’t be surprised that the garden in the background of the Linder gallery contains such a feature.  It may have been modeled on one of Hans Vredeman de Vries’s popular and widely circulated designs, an example of which is shown below.  We can also see, in this painting by Vredeman de Vries, a configuration of balcony, staircase, and obelisk more or less identical to the configuration of the Linder gallery.

Windsor Drawing (RL 12983)

Perhaps the most intriguing difference between the drawing and the painting is that the drawing shows a more conventional grouping of three connoisseurs in conversation instead of the allegorical figures shown in the painting. Could this be the preparatory drawing on which the painting was based?

There are several reasons to think so. For one thing, several of the paintings shown on the walls in the drawing appear to be rough compositional sketches for the paintings shown in the painting. For example if you look at the sketch of the Nymphs and Satyrs in the upper left of the drawing you see a nymph in the centre reaching  up with her right arm, and a satyr reaching down, whereas in the finished painting there is a nymph in the left foreground reaching up with her left arm. Similarly in the sketch for Belshazaar’s Feast, one sees King Belshazzar seated on the left, with servants bringing exotic foods including a peacock pie. In the finished painting the peacock pie is already on the table.

Comparison of Belshazzar's Feast in drawing and painting

This suggests that the sketches in the drawings are quick compositional sketches for the final paintings. It also suggests that the paintings on the walls of the Linder Gallery are not copies of real works but original compositions in the style of well known Flemish, Dutch and Italian artists of the time (if you were copying an existing painting, surely you wouldn’t change the composition?).

So it appears that the Windsor drawing is prior to the Linder Gallery, and also that the paintings on the walls in both are imaginary works. The perspective scheme of the Windsor drawing is also identical to that of the Linder Gallery, and technical analysis of the painting has shown a perspective underdrawing which shows this even more strongly.

Detail of Windsor Drawing

Another interesting feature of the Windsor drawings is the three conversing figures. The book A Mysterious Masterpiece contains a suggestion as to their possible identity. The figure on the right is identified as Antwerp’s most famous painter, Peter Paul Rubens. The figure on the left is identified as Peter Linder, the German merchant who was the patron of the Linder Gallery, and it is suggested that the central figure is Anthony van Dyck, who worked in Rubens’ studio. It is possible that the Windsor drawing was created to memorialize a visit Linder made to Antwerp, during which he met Rubens, van Dyck and the painter (still unknown) of the Linder Gallery.