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Old masters, new perspectives: The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin
Rediscover Berlin's Gemäldegalerie through 1,100+ gigapixel works and AI storytelling.
Old masters, new perspectives: The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin
Feb 26, 2026
Rediscover Berlin's Gemäldegalerie through 1,100+ Gigapixel works and AI storytelling.
Dr. Dagmar Hirschfelder
Director Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Amit Sood
Founder and Senior Director, Google Arts & Culture
General summary
The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin partnered with Google Arts & Culture to digitize over 1100 paintings. Now you can explore the collection in unprecedented quality online via the "Canvas Legends" hub. You can also use the Google Arts & Culture app to view online exhibitions and zoom into Gigapixel images.
Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.
Bullet points
- "Old Masters, New Perspectives" shows Berlin's Gemäldegalerie masterpieces online in amazing detail.
- Google Arts & Culture digitized over 1,100 paintings, letting you zoom in super close.
- "Mice in the Museum" uses AI to create fun stories about the paintings' details.
- The online hub organizes art by life stages, proving these old works are still relevant.
Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.
Basic explainer
A famous art museum in Berlin worked with Google Arts & Culture. They put over a thousand paintings online in super high quality. Now people can zoom in and see tiny details they'd miss in person. AI helps tell fun stories about the art too.
Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.
Explore other styles:
Canvas Legends: The Story of Life
Listen to article
This content is generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental
[[duration]] minutes
The Gemäldegalerie, Berlin’s renowned painting gallery, guards one of the most important treasures of European art history. The museum houses masterpieces from the 13th to the 18th century — including paintings by Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer and Angelika Kauffmann.
Since 2011, the Gemäldegalerie has been collaborating with Google Arts & Culture and other institutions of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) to bring cultural heritage to the world and make it accessible online. Building on the long-standing partnership between the Gemäldegalerie and Google Arts & Culture, we are now reaching another milestone: The new "Canvas Legends" hub makes the museum's works accessible in unprecedented quality and scope, offering entirely new perspectives on this outstanding collection.
Zoom into the collection
This is the largest art digitization for a museum that Google Arts & Culture has undertaken to date for more than 1,100 paintings — including masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, Caravaggio, and Rembrandt. You can also explore the paintings organised by time or color.
Behind the scenes: Using Art Camera technology, over 1,100 masterpieces from the Gemäldegalerie were digitized in high-resolution gigapixel quality.
Vermeer’s “Young Lady with a Pearl Necklace” (1663/1665)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s "The Dutch Proverbs" (1559)
Albrecht Dürer’s "The Madonna with the Siskin" (1506)
Angelica Kauffmann’s
“Cephise cuts the sleeping Cupids' wings” (1782)
These Gigapixel images act as a digital magnifying glass allowing both experts and art enthusiasts alike to examine the surfaces of the paintings in minute detail. Anyone looking at the fine brushstrokes in Vermeer's ’Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace’ or the cracks in the varnish will discover subtleties that often remain hidden to the naked eye for museum visitors. Zooming into the paintings sharpens the eye for the craftsmanship as well as the virtuosity of the Old Masters.
Storytelling combining art and AI
To offer a playful perspective on the Old Masters and encourage us to look closer at the details in this collection, the Google Arts & Culture Lab has created Mice in the Museum, an interactive experience in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie. Choose your journey through the museum while listening to fictional characters discuss the owl on Malle Babbe's shoulder or the drama of a Rubens painting. Based on the academic metadata about the painting and image analysis, Google Gemini generates a fun, narrative dialogue between two mice commenting on the action on the canvas.
Mice in the Museum: Listen to an AI-generated audio dialogue where two fictional mice playfully discuss masterpieces like Rembrandt's self-portrait.
[Screenshot of the "Mice in the Museum" AI experiment featuring Rembrandt's self-portrait.]
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