Robots are popping up around the art world. We've told you about a robot that knows how to paint and now we're here to tell you about a machine that helps restore artworks. Madrid’s Reina Sofia museum owns a large robot that scans paintings and takes hundreds of microscopic infrared and ultraviolet pictures. The photos vividly reveal a work's scratches, cracks, and creases; the images are phenomenal for those wishing to touch up a painting.
The robot is called “Pablito" because the first work it took on was the museum’s top treasure—a large work by Pablo entitled Guernica that depicts the Spanish Civil War. Pablito is 9 meters in length, 3.5 meters in width, and weighs in at a massive 1.2 tons. It can be controlled remotely by a computer or it can work without supervision. We can see the machine becoming very valuable to art restorers in the future.
"We can see countless details which we could not see with the naked eye," restoration computer technician Humberto Duran said to The Associated Foreign Press. Reina Sofia’s head of conservation Jorge Garcia said the machine reveals with great precision what state a painting is in, what its layers looks like, what problems exist, or how it was made.
You can see a video showing the machine in action here.
[viaRawStory]
