Rembrandt’s masterpiece The Night Watch can now be examined as never before thanks to the largest-ever digital image of an artwork, placed on the Rijksmuseum’s website.

As part of a mammoth research project, the 1642 portrait of Amsterdam’s civic guard marching out to defend the city can now be seen online in pin-sharp detail.

The Rijksmuseum, which has been studying the work behind a glass box in the museum since the summer of 2019, has now shared a composite image made up of 8,430 photographs. The total image has a resolution of 717 gigapixels, or 717,000,000,000 pixels; artificial intelligence was used to piece the small photos together to form a total file size of 5.6 terabytes, the museum claims.

Robert Erdmann, senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum and described as the ‘brains’ behind the gigantic photo told Dutch paper the Telegraaf that it was like being able to zoom in to minute satellite detail via Google Earth.

“You can really dive into all of the crevices,” he said. “It is as though you are walking through the Grand Canyon. Except here, you don’t see various layers of earth, but all of the different layers of paint that Rembrandt applied to his canvas.”