Visitors to the Mauritshuis museum can use their smartphone to experience Rembrandt van Rijn's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp in augmented reality, thanks to Dutch design agency CapitolaVR.
To mark 350 years since the passing of the 17th-century Dutch painter, CapitolaVR created the Rembrandt Reality app that uses augmented reality to let people "step inside" one of the artist's most famous paintings.
The app offers visitors a virtual reality experience of the anatomical dissection that took place in 1632, as depicted by the artist, in a bid to explore new ways of interacting with historic artworks using technology.
Rembrandt van Rijn's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is the subject of an augmented reality experience at the Mauritshuis museum Users can interact with virtual holographic 3D objects that have been scanned from a real life reconstruction of the painting using devices compatible with Apple's ARKit or Google's ARCore augmented reality platforms.
"We wanted to give people the opportunity to actually walk into the artwork and explore the painting and the story behind it with innovative technology," said CapitolaVR's head of digital David Robustelli.
"The AR app offers people a different way of exploring art both visually and on an educational level," Robustelli added. "As you 'physically' step into the painting you are fully immersed and learn its history while exploring the way it was created by one of the...