"One must have died many times to paint this way. They rightly call Rembrandt a magician,” Vincent van Gogh wrote with admiration for his compatriot in one of his letters to his brother Theo. Two centuries separate two of the greatest Dutch artists from a real meeting, but great art is timeless. A Bulgarian and his team prove this by making possible the meeting between the two artists in an emblematic place for them and reveal the untold story of the genius.

The unique 3D mapping projection entitled "Vincent meets Rembrandt: The Untold Story" was opened on July 1, in Norderkerk, the northern church in Amsterdam. The spectacular audio-visual story, created by Bulgaria’s Marin Petkov and his team, lasts 40 minutes and unfolds on a 360-degree canvas, which has become the entire interior of the cathedral. All this will be available to visitors for the next five years, every day except Sunday, which is traditionally dedicated to worship.

The invitation to create the project comes from Petkov's long-term partners, with whom he also worked on the famous "Festival of Lights" in Berlin. The Bulgarian is the artistic director of the event, which has been organized since 2004, and this year's edition will be between September 3 and 12. 

His team is also behind more than 400 projects in the field of 3D mapping, implemented around the world.

The work of creating "Vincent meets Rembrandt" took four and a half months:

"We had started work last year, but due to the pandemic the project was cancelled and this year we finished the production itself”, says Marin. “There were several difficulties before us. The first was to build an interesting story. Our creative director Strahil Yordanov created it based mainly on the letters between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo. The other complicated thing that we paid a lot of attention to was how to present the works, the animation and the overall style, so that it would be appreciated both by people from the Van Gogh Museum, for example, and by teenagers who are not familiar with his work.”

The choice of "home" for the show is not accidental. The northern church Noorderkerk was built in 1623 and is one of the places that both Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh visited in the 17^th and 19^th centuries, respectively. Both artists lived in this part of Amsterdam at some point in their lives and they were both very pious. "We have done a lot of similar projects in churches and cathedrals, mainly in Belgium and France," admits Marin Petkov. However, they have never lasted more than 3 months and have never "contained" such a dense story.

"What’s different in our project is that all of Vincent's work is shown chronologically, his development as an artist is traced and according to his emotions from the letters we have chosen the appropriate paintings for visualization. Although there is a paradox with him - when he was very depressed, the pictures he painted were extremely bright and positive-looking. With Rembrandt, we approached it differently. When Van Gogh talks about him and specific paintings, we show those paintings. There are also those which are chosen at our discretion, according to the story”.

The Bulgarian admits that he and his colleagues have invested a lot of their own artistic vision in the 3D mapping projection.

"We used various techniques and modern methods to complete some of the works in an authentic way to fill the large area of ​​the cathedral. We also used various technologies such as artificial intelligence to simulate painting brushes in their style. We have ideas to show this project also elsewhere but time will tell if we will be able to make it happen”, Marin Petkov concludes.

English version Rositsa Petkova

Photos: vincentmeetsrembrandt.com