Rediscovering Mural Paintings: Experiencing Medieval Art as Originally Conceived Through Historical Light Simulation
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
The lighting of Cultural Heritage artifacts plays a crucial role in how we perceive and consequently understand artworks. However, lighting is typically designed to enhance the experience of contemporary visitors, often diverging significantly from the original conditions and techniques under which these works were created. This disconnect between historical and modern lighting conditions makes it difficult to fully understand the original visual experience. This issue is particularly evident in the case of Romanesque paintings, which are now exhibited in well-lit museums, but were originally displayed in dimly lit churches. In this paper, we present a method to bridge this gap, focusing on the paintings of a Romanesque church. We achieve this by simulating the original lighting conditions. Our approach encompasses the entire pipeline, from acquiring data of equivalent historical light sources and computing natural lighting to performing physically based rendering for accurate light simulation. Additionally, we have developed a web application that allows users to inspect and compare the resulting HDR images using different tone mapping and luminance operators. Our work provides a valuable tool for art historians and the general public to explore different lighting hypotheses and gain a deeper understanding of the experience of visiting a medieval church as originally conceived.
Description
CCS Concepts: Applied computing → Fine arts; Human-centered computing → Scientific visualization; Computing methodologies → Rendering
@inproceedings{10.2312:dh.20253044,
booktitle = {Digital Heritage},
editor = {Campana, Stefano and Ferdani, Daniele and Graf, Holger and Guidi, Gabriele and Hegarty, Zackary and Pescarin, Sofia and Remondino, Fabio},
title = {{Rediscovering Mural Paintings: Experiencing Medieval Art as Originally Conceived Through Historical Light Simulation}},
author = {Munoz-Pandiella, Imanol and Kaur-Singh, Manvir and Bosch, Carles and Andujar, Carlos and Pueyo, Xavier},
year = {2025},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-277-6},
DOI = {10.2312/dh.20253044}
}