SCROVEGNI CHAPEL: TECHNOLOGY POINTS THE WAY

The restoration carried out in 2002 by the ICR renewed the building. The Municipality of Padova decided to regulate the number of visitors to help protect the frescoes.

As a result visits to the chapel must be booked and groups of over 25 people are collenot allowed. After a few minutes in a specially air conditioned room visitors can enter the chapel for a maximum of 15 minutes.

Given the short time allowed for questions the Municipality has created a space for continuous in depth discovery. This is the first virtual museum in Italy, with virtual installations combined with exhibition models.Technology becomes the key to understanding the thousands of possible interpretations of the masterpiece.

The experience

The visitors are immersed in the blue of a Giotto-like sky, with thousands of stars overhead. There are seven installations in the room and seven steps to be made.

The tour begins with a film in five languages of the background history of the chapel and creation of the frescoes, seen and recounted through the eyes and voice of Enrico Scrovegni.

Next are two interactive computer stations where the visitor can learn more about 14th century Padua and details about the frescoes.There is also a scale reproduction of the house of St Anne wh

ich represents a tangible interface connecting the two-dimensional world of the fresco and the three dimensional one of the architecture. The artist’s workshop has been recreated in a corner of the room.A virtual reality station offers plenty of interaction, with the visitors immersed in a three-dimensional space in which to freely explore the church.

The technology

The virtual reality developed for the Scrovegni Chapel uses advanced technology such as 3-D interaction in real time and hundreds of “virtual moves”.RealView, 3d Max and Photoshop were used.

The entire virtual reality programme was written in c++, using OpenGI by Windows. Real time illumination was created by OpenGL, and the colour components of the frescoes and architectural space of the chapel were recorded precisely. The original torchlight illumination of the chapel was recreated.