Mastodawn

Fabienne Gallaire

The Yellow Milkmaid Syndrome.

"The Milkmaid’, one of Johannes Vermeer's most famous pieces, depicts a scene of a woman quietly pouring milk into a bowl. During a survey the Rijksmuseum discovered that there were over 10,000 copies of the image on the internet—mostly poor, yellowish reproductions. As a result of all of these low-quality copies on the web, according to the Rijksmuseum, “people simply
didn’t believe the postcards in our museum shop were showing the original painting. This was the trigger for us to put high-resolution images of the original work with open metadata on the web ourselves. Opening up our data is our best defence against the ‘yellow Milkmaid’."
https://pro.europeana.eu/post/the-problem-of-the-yellow-milkmaid
#art #collections #museum #openmuseum

Fabienne Gallaire 1d ago

See also
https://yellowmilkmaidsyndrome.tumblr.com/

Yellow Milkmaid Syndrome

Artwork with identity problems. You can submit trouble (public domain) artwork via the link in the...

Tumblr

raspberryswirl 11h ago

@Lignedescience 😭 so many diffrent colors, how to spot the original? only in the museum? do we need a color specto graph on pixelbase?

I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥25m ago

@raspberryswirl You just need to go to the free authoritative online collection.

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/The-Threatened-Swan--22040f90565e730131983a44a85b989f

The Threatened Swan is the painting I visit most in person, so I link to that one.

@Lignedescience

The Threatened Swan

A swan fiercely defends its nest against a dog. In later centuries this scuffle was interpreted as a political allegory: the white swan was thought to symbolize the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt (assassinated in 1672) protecting the country from its enemies. This was the meaning attached to the painting when it became the very first acquisition to enter the Nationale Kunstgalerij (the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum) in 1800.

Rijksmuseum.nl

Hammerwell 1d ago

@Lignedescience Adjacent to this, a medieval filter is often used. Everything has to look old or desolate, or grey or dirty or anything at once. No, our ancestors didn't live like this!

Fabienne Gallaire 1d ago

@Hammerwell Ah yes the infamous "oxydized varnish" filter...

@Hammerwell @Lignedescience on a complete tangent, I wonder at some of the modelmakers making exquisite WW2 tanks and aeroplanes and adding a hefty dose of wear and tear... how much rust (on tanks) and chipped/faded paint can possibly accumulate in the months between the vehicle being built and it being destroyed/written off/replaced as obsolete..?

@jackeric @Hammerwell @Lignedescience I don't know the answer to your question but based on a bike chains ability to turn orange overnight I could believe that a mid century steel tank could show rust quickly in a battle environment.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)18h ago

@acs @jackeric @Hammerwell @Lignedescience

I used to do dark-ages reenactment in Swansea. You'd make sure your sword was shiny in the morning and, after a couple of hours exposed to the salty and humid air, there would be visible rust (yes, my housemates did make a lot of 'polishing his sword' jokes). Even if you went into battle with a shiny sword and armour, you'd be showing a lot of corrosion by the end of the fight. Something like Azincourt, which was a battle that followed a multi-day retreat in the rain, probably had rusty knights everywhere.

Hammerwell 17h ago

@david_chisnall @acs @jackeric @Lignedescience How do you polish chainmail? Must be annoying. Anything into a bag with a light abrasive and kicking it around until the page is exhausted?

DeterioratedStucco 11h ago

@Hammerwell
IIUC this is right; bag of sand.

@david_chisnall @acs @jackeric @Lignedescience

DeterioratedStucco 10h ago

@jackeric
Look up "Desert Pink". IIRC this is what happens when USAAF sand-coloured paint gets exposed to desert sunshine for several months (1942-3, notably on the B-26). It happened enough that there's a name for it, so it can't have been that uncommon.
As far as tanks go, IIUC it's more likely dust and mud. I have seen photos of German armour in Russia being smeared with mud as camouflage (I think related to thaws in early winter, after the vehicles had been overpainted white).

@Hammerwell @Lignedescience

Hammerwell 10h ago

@SoftwareTheron @jackeric @Lignedescience OK, I shift the sidenote even further to airplanes. There was a pink camo scheme in WW2 for very special circumstances. And it worked. Rex made a Video of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPv4Wkc0Pm8

The Logic Behind Pink Spitfires in WW2 | Rex Explains

YouTube

DeterioratedStucco 4h ago

@Hammerwell
Thanks, I'd forgotten those. But as you say, they are not an answer to the original question.
@jackeric @Lignedescience

@Hammerwell @Lignedescience
Having done reenactment for a number of years yes this anytime you go for filming let's make them dirty. No. If you are about to do battle chances are you're wearing fresh gear handed to you fairly recently and all you've done is march in it then remove it before making camp.

@Hammerwell @Lignedescience

BBC wanted to use baby oil and cocoa powder to "stand out on camera as real mud absorbs the light too much"
Naturally wearing our own gear we all said "aye nae chance big man. Unless yer payin fur us tae replace aw wur WHITE padded jacks, ye kin back off wi thon shite!"

@Hammerwell @Lignedescience
Also
The Netflix movie Outlaw King
I am the taxman at the desk
They insisted on making my face muddy
Fucking taxman?
Muddy face?
Christ they'd wash in a bowl of cold water ya fannies!

Regendans 1d ago

A whitepaper from 2011 that starts with three bit ly weblinks.

By the way, here's an image which is likely a genuine one. Fourth image down from the top. :

https://www.mauritshuis.nl/ontdek-collectie/onze-meesters/johannes-vermeer

Johannes Vermeer in het Mauritshuis

Maak een selfie met het Meisje met de parel of droom weg bij Gezicht op Delft van Johannes Vermeer. Kom naar het Mauritshuis in Den Haag!

Fabienne Gallaire 1d ago

@regendans Define: genuine... proper lighting, proper balancing, good quality, sure.
Bad pics scanned from cheap reproductions are often awful, but before big museums started to open their databases it was often the less bad available option...

Alix Guillard 1d ago

@Lignedescience I wonder what they could do to fix the false copyright claim that sometimes happen with the same paintings…
https://meinamsterdam.nl/retrospective-vermeer-droit-auteur/ (sorry in french) #art #collections #museum #openmuseum #rijksmuseum #louvre

La rétrospective Vermeer et les abus du droit d'auteur

Ce printemps le Rijksmuseum ouvre sa rétrospective Johannes Vermeer et rassemble pour la première fois en un seul lieu, 28 tableaux du maître du XVIIᵉ siècle sur...

me in Amsterdam

Walter Nissen 1d ago

@Lignedescience I know what you're saying, but of the two images in the this post, I'd take the greater dynamic range of the yellow one on the right any day. The version from mauritshuis.nl that you shared the link to obviously far better than either, to be sure. And very nice to have authoritative versions, especially of paintings that were painted hundreds of years ago and clearly the original artist, the artist's great grandchildren, and anyone remotely connected with the artist being long dead.

Entikan 19h ago

@Lignedescience It always struck me how different paintings look in real life compared to digital pictures. Even very high quality ones.

Juna 🌈13h ago

@Lignedescience Interesting, sometimes they tell the story of the Van Gogh Sunflowers ....