A poster of one of Vincent van Gogh's sunflowers is one of the traditional adornments to a student bedroom. The rest of us hang our reproductions in the knowledge that even the good ones are far from faithful to the originals — for which the going rate is £24 million (¥3.7 billion).
But not any more. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has developed high-quality 3-D reproductions of some of its finest paintings, with what it describes as the most advanced copying technique ever seen. Axel Ruger, the museum's director, said: "It really is the next generation of reproductions because they go into the third dimension. If you're a layman, they are pretty indistinguishable (from the originals). Of course, if you're a connoisseur and you look closely, you can see the difference."
Each reproduction is priced at £22,000 (¥3.4 million)— somewhat more than the cost of a postcard or poster. But the museum is hoping to increase access to pictures which, if they were sold, would go for countless millions.