One Italian Director Animated These Old Masterpieces With New Technology

A particularly stunning form of modern photography is the cinemagraph, a blend between a video and a photograph that captures a flicker of accenting motion against a still background.

For his video above, BEAUTY, Italian director Rino Stefano Tagliafierro took the idea of the cinemagraph and traveled back in time. Working with a large list of paintings, from masters such as Caravaggio and Rubens and Bouguereau, Tagliafierro worked to animate the artworks ex post facto.

The result of Tagliafierro's tinkering is both moving and—at times—a little creepy. It might be best described as a beautiful rendition of the uncanny valley.

H/T Open Culture

Colin Schultz | | READ MORE

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.