VIRTUAL RECONSTRUCTION of the BIRTHPLACE of REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: From HISTORICAL RESEARCH over 3D MODELING TOWARDS VIRTUAL PRESENTATION

Abstract

2019 marks the 350th anniversary of the death of the famous seventeenth-century painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Rembrandt was born in 1606 in the city of Leiden, located in the Netherlands. Here he grew up, was educated and set up his early practice before moving to Amsterdam at age 31. He is the son of a miller's family, which lived and worked in the city at the dawn of the Dutch Golden Age - a period in which Leiden transformed from a medieval city to an early modern metropolis. Although the historical city fabric of Leiden is well preserved, the birthplace of the famous painter, unfortunately, has been demolished. Also, the surroundings are unrecognizable today. For this reason, the tourism and marketing department of the city asked Erfgoed Leiden, the regional heritage department, to make a 3D virtual reconstruction of Rembrandt's birthplace and its surrounding. It resulted in a multi-disciplinary collaboration between archivists, building archaeologist, and a 3D artist. This paper reflects this cooperation from historical research over aspects of the 3D modeling pipeline to the final products of the reconstruction. Following a reliability matrix, the data were categorized for their reliability after careful evaluation of their accuracy depending on the source.