The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is the subject of the highest resolution photograph ever made. At 16 billion pixels it dwarfs previous high res efforts. Best of all - it has been published on the Internet and is freely available to anyone with an Internet connection to download.
Father Stefano Rabacchi, Prior of the monastery where The Last Supper is located said that "Although Leonardo painted it for us, but we are obliged to share it with the world."
The image was made by stitching together 1,677 images made with a Nikon D2X digital SLR that required 2 quad-core AMD processors, 16 GB of RAM, and a 2 terabyte hard drive to handle the data. The image is all the more remarkable because normal photographic lighting techniques are not possible due to the fragile condition of the mural, and so special lights were developed that did not have the damaging ultra-violet and thermal properties associated with regular studio lights.
The restrictions on viewing The Last Supper extend to the 320,000 annual visitors to the monastery. Tickets need to be purchased months in advance, and then each visitor must enter via a decontamination chamber and are restricted to a maximum of 15 minutes in front of the painting. Despite precautions, there is ongoing debate as to the advisability of allowing direct viewings at all. In light of this the new online image is especially important.
Links:
16 billion pixel image of The Last Supper
Instituto Centrale per il Restauro, The conservation organization who developed the lighting
Cenacolo Vinciano, For making bookings to view The Last Supper
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