717 Gigapixel Image of Rembrandt's Nightwatch

Seeing Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum a decade or so ago totally changed my view of seeing things in a museum vs. seeing them online. I'm a child of the internet and had this view that seeing it on my screen was good enough, but wow is Night Watch incredible up close and in person. Overwhelming, almost. A totally different experience.

That said, this image is amazing, and lets you see a lot more detail than you can easily manage at the museum.

Same, in a similar note I’ve been a big fan of Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau all my life and I had no idea that he used gold paint!

Having seen so many jpegs and pictures in books of his works, it did not convey or describe this at all!

I passed one in a gallery one time (not looking for one) and the sheen from the lights reflecting totally changed everything in a more amazing way!

An RGB value per pixel is not all of the information you need to render a painting accurately! To capture the effect you describe, paintings should be scanned with something that can capture a BDRF. Then viewing them in VR could give a very accurate experience.