Artists Recreate Lost Masterpieces Using Stock Photos

Some of the greatest works of art have been lost, destroyed, or stolen over the years. In 1931, Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s masterpiece Cathedral Towering Over a Town was burned to a crisp in an act of arson, while Caravaggio's Saint Matthew and the Angel was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in 1945. In 1955, Frida Kahlo’s The Wounded Table mysteriously disappeared on its way to an exhibition in Moscow, and in 1990, in what is considered the largest art theft in U.S. history, Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. But now, all of these lost masterpieces have been re-created, using nothing but Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Stock images.

According to Adweek, Adobe and ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners commissioned four artists to create new versions of these lost and destroyed paintings, both to showcase the versatility of Adobe Stock photos and to celebrate great art. For instance, graphic artist Ankur Patar, WIRED reports, rebuilt The Storm on the Sea of Galilee using hundreds of photos of clouds, people, waves, and boats to remake Rembrandt’s lost painting. He told WIRED that the massive wave in the foreground of the painting was actually the product of 20 different photos blended together.

Artist Karla Cordova, meanwhile, recreated The Wounded Table by painstakingly combining and mixing the individual facial characteristics of a range of stock photo models. Taking the hair from one photo model, the eyebrows from another, she created the faces of Frida Kahlo and her companions.

"No one can truly replace these lost paintings,” Goodby Silverstein & Partners creative director Will Elliot told Adweek. “But by faithfully re-creating them with Adobe Stock, we can remember them again and reshape what the world thinks about stock photography in the process.”

Check out time lapses of the lost masterpieces being remade below:

[h/t WIRED]