Virtual Veronese: Harnessing the Power of the Digital

Useful and interesting online lecture from National Gallery introducing their Veronese virtual reality experience.

Rebecca Gill, the curator of the exhibition and Lawrence Childs, Head of Digital Services at the gallery took us through the reasons for commissioning this work and the process by which it was made. The project aimed to put Veronese’s “The Consecration of St Nicholas” digitally back into the chapel for which it was commissioned.

Gill explained the context of the picture and the story they were trying to tell. She covered its commissioning by a monastery known for its Lutheran tendencies, how it was removed in the Napoleonic wars and how the chapel had changed over the years.

They then discussed the processes of scanning the chapel and how they investigated changes which needed to be made to get the space back to when the picture was unveiled in 1562. They talked about finding a suitable new frame to add digitally and how in doing that they revealed a circular window which had been covered up by the later one. They also talked about building soundscape for the work including commissioning a recording of piece of music from a book written in the abbey.

It was interesting to see some early experiments which included the real picture in its usual gallery and talked us though what they learnt from this leading to decisions they made for the final display.

I have done the experience since, watch this space for a review, but was pleased I’d attended this talk to understand the intricacies and details in it.

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