Johannas Vermeer is one of art history's most important painters. While his body of work comprises less than 40 pieces, his paintings can be found in a myriad of museums—both real and imaginary. In Meet Vermeer, a digital platform created by Google Arts & Culture and the Mauritshuis Museum, Vermeer's entire body of work is “illuminated in the virtual space” and presented in augmented reality.
Featuring 36 paintings from 18 museums, Meet Vermeer curates and compiles Vermeer's entire oeuvre into an online gallery. Like a real museum, this virtual space is thematically divided into rooms, ranging from Storytelling to Tronies. Each painting is accompanied by “wall text,” and can be viewed in extraordinary detail with the simple click of a mouse.
While the idea of augmented reality may seem complex, Meet Vermeer is conveniently user-friendly. To explore the online gallery, simply download the Google Arts & Culture app onto your smartphone. As long as it has a working camera, “all you have to do is point your phone at a flat surface, wave it in a circle, and voila—you, too, can have a virtual museum floating above your bed and nightstand. After that, you can pinch and zoom on each of the seven rooms to ‘enter' the AR museum to view the paintings.”
To wander around this virtual museum, visit the Google Arts & Culture website.
Learn all about this augmented reality museum below!
h/t: [Open Culture]
All images via Google Arts & Culture.
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