With its massive Art Project, Google employs its dominance over digital media to present a vast online archive of the world’s most enduring and beloved fine art masterpieces, along with street-view tours of the institutions that house them.
Each featured museum was given free rein in selecting the breadth and scope of its contributions, resulting in an array of ancient and modern works, cross-referenced by place and artist. The real treats are the mega-high resolution on the zoom-enabled pics, viewer’s-eye tours of impressive architecture — and the chance to play online curator yourself with priceless objects of beauty.
Explore the constantly growing Google Art Project, watch related videos on its YouTube Channel, and follow the expansion on Facebook.
Click through below for a gallery of images from the Google Art Project.
Leonardo da Vinci, Baptism of Christ, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Juan Gris, Coffee Grinder, Cup and Glass on a Table, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Figures, Museum Kampa, Prague
Vincent van Gogh, Fishing boats on the beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Harmensz van Rijn Rembrandt, Flora, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
Hans Holbein, The Merchant George Gisze, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Ingres, Comtesse d’Haussonville, The Frick Collection, NYC
Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette, Palace of Versailles, France
Chris Ofili, No Woman, No Cry, Tate Britain, London
Johannes Vermeer, Officer and Laughing Girl, The Frick Collection, NYC
George Dawe, Portrait of General Pyotr Bagration (1765-1812), The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
Vladimir Borovikovskiy, Portrait of M.I.Lopukhina, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Bronzino, Saint Sebastian, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Richard Dadd, The Flight out of Egypt, Tate Britain, London
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Harbor of Dieppe, The Frick Collection, NYC
Paul Gauguin, The Seed of Areoi, MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Jan Asselijn, The Threatened Swan interpreted later as an Allegory on Johan de Witt, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Unknown, The Unicorn in Captivity, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors, National Gallery, London
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Forge, The Frick Collection, NYC
Vittore Carpaccio, Young Knight in a Landscape, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
El Greco, View of Toledo, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Henri Rousseau, Dream, MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Gustave Courbet, Woman with a Parrot, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Édouard Manet, Young Lady in 1866, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Behind the Scenes at the Google Art Project