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In each case, the Lundens painting was treated as the question and the Rembrandt version as the answer. Then three neural networks were trained on: faces and bodies colour and painting style. Basically, the original painting was photographed in extraordinary detail involving nine different methods вЂ“ a process that yielded over 51 terabytes of data.

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The story of how they achieved their goal is fascinating and nicely told in a series of short videos on the project website. The other was the idea that they might be able to train a machine-learning system to analyse (and perhaps imitate) RembrandtвЂ™s style. So there was a visual reference copy, even if Lundens was an inferior artist to Rembrandt. One was the fact that a 17th-century Dutch artist, Gerrit Lundens, had painted a copy of the original вЂ“ which now hangs in the National Gallery in London. Two factors encouraged the curators to believe that this might be feasible. In 2019 the Rijksmuseum embarked on Operation Night Watch вЂ“ a multi-year, multimillion-euro project to restore the missing edges. And then, to add insult to injury, the trimmings were lost! A 60cm-wide panel was removed from the lefthand side, 22cm from the top, 12cm from the bottom and 7cm from the righthand side. City officials wanted the painting to hang between two doors but discovered that it was too big to fit, and so these municipal vandals decided to cut the masterpiece down to size. But 75 years later the decision was made to move it to the Arquebusiers Guild Hall in AmsterdamвЂ™s city hall. It was completed by Rembrandt in 1642, having been commissioned by Captain Bannick Cocq and 17 members of the kloveniers (civic militia guards) for the banqueting hall of their newly built meeting hall in Amsterdam. What I hadnвЂ™t known, all those years ago though, was that I was only contemplating a part of the original painting. ItвЂ™s a huge painting (379 x 453cm) and it has an overwhelming presence. It came to be called The Night Watch because by the end of the 18th century it had darkened considerably through the accumulation of layers of dirt and varnish, leading to the belief that the painted scene had occurred after dusk. Its official title is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. But on nearly every visit I found myself being drawn back to one of RembrandtвЂ™s most famous pictures вЂ“ The Night Watch вЂ“ which I guess is to the Rijksmuseum what the Mona Lisa is to the Louvre. The museum is a wonderful storehouse of Dutch art and there was always much to explore. Often, on Sundays, I would travel to Amsterdam, go to the morning concert in the Spiegelzaal of the Concertgebouw, and afterwards walk over to the Rijksmuseum, HollandвЂ™s national gallery, and spend a couple of hours there. I n the late 1970s I lived and worked briefly in the Netherlands.