The Rembrandt Heritage Foundation wants to open a virtual Rembrandt Museum. To raise funds for it, the foundation will sell 8000 digital pieces of the Night Watch for 200-300 euros each in cryptocurrency. Not only do they sell digital images of parts of the masterpiece, but they also sell non-fungible or NFT tokens – unique properties that cannot be copied. The property is also recorded in a database.
Furthermore, these are cutoffs from the image of the Night’s Watch as it should have looked when the artwork left Rembrandt’s studio at 16642, in its original size and colours. The pieces were cut in the 18th century, but thanks to a 17th-century copy, we know what the full painting originally looked like. Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wittinger, who passed away last year, has digitized, reformulated and restored all of Rembrandt’s work with the Rembrandt Heritage Foundation. It will now be used again.
Buyers cannot choose which item they buy. So they just have to wait and see what part they get. But with the purchase of a part (under a digital cover), they “become not only the owners of their own piece of The Night Watch, but also the founder of the MetaRembrandt Museum, which will open later,” the initiators said. “This is the only place in the world where all of Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings have been re-engineered, digitally restored optimally to their original condition, and can be admired in high resolution.”
NFT owners will get free admission to the digital museum, which includes 306 paintings of the great master.
