[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1240438760.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tHundreds of paintings lost to the ravages of war\u2014including multiple works by Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Anthony van Dyck, and Caravaggio\u2014will soon be viewable online courtesy of a digitization initiative by Berlin\u2019s Gem\u00e4ldegalerie.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe museum\u2019s formidable collection of Old Master paintings was damaged by two fires around the end of World War II. But as reported by the Art Newspaper<\/em>, digital renderings made from high-resolution glass negatives from a photo-documentation campaign started in 1925 are bringing the works back to life, in a way.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe losses have long represented a major gap in the visual record and in attribution, provenance and conservation research,\u201d according to TAN<\/em>. But records by way of the glass negatives\u2014most of them made by the German photographer Gustav Schwarz, as part of an ongoing process related to new acquisitions that continued until 1944\u2014stand to make the works accessible.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey have tremendous documentary value\u2014not only for the museum and the collection itself but also for the public,\u201d Katja Kleinert, the Gem\u00e4ldegalerie\u2019s deputy director and project leader,\u00a0told TAN<\/em>. \u201cBy digitizing the glass negatives, the significance of the collection can be understood in a completely new way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTo make the new digital renderings, the glass negatives were rephotographed with high-resolution camera equipment in the Gem\u00e4ldegalerie\u2019s photo archive room, so as to avoid moving the sensitive plates. \u201cConsidering their fragility, it is remarkable how well the collection has survived,\u201d said Franziska May, a provenance research associate at the museum. \u201cOnly a very small number of plates had damage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the digital images are uploaded (\u201cprobably later this year,\u201d according to TAN<\/em>), viewers will be able to zoom in and isolate details of the works\u2014and download them as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/berlin-museum-digital-resurrection-destroyed-paintings-1234782311\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1240438760.jpg?w=1024″] Hundreds of paintings lost to the ravages of war\u2014including multiple works by Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Anthony van Dyck, and Caravaggio\u2014will soon be viewable online courtesy of a digitization initiative by Berlin\u2019s Gem\u00e4ldegalerie. The museum\u2019s formidable collection of Old Master paintings was damaged by two fires around the end of World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1897278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1897278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1897278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1897278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1897278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}