The oldest museum in Romania, the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, is bringing to life online paintings from its collections, with the aid of artificial intelligence, in such a way that the scenes painted almost 200 years ago are now set in motion.

A selection of winter-themed works has been animated for the first time on the Facebook page of the Sibiu museum, in recent days in a contemporary visual format, adjusted for the consumption of online content, such as reels and digital shorts.

The Brukenthal National Museum presented on Friday a painting from the collection of Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, attributed in 1844 to an anonymous German, and since 1893 to an anonymous Dutch.

'The work represents a special case: although the composition reflects some influences of the painters of Flemish landscapes of the 16th-17th centuries, with tiny characters (also concerned with works and joys specific to the season, but very few) and a leafless and contorted tree, used as a repoussoir, the painter is especially interested in a faithful and detailed representation of the installations of the stroller that ensures the operation of the mill, his precision in rendering them, even suggesting a certain familiarity with technological illustrations,' one of the art specialists of the Sibiu museum, Alexandru Sonoc, says in a social media post.

Brukenthal Museum photographer Daniel Farcasiu is using AI to present the painting online, not in a photo, but in a short video, to show how the smoke comes out of the chimney of a building in the background, people walk or skate on the icy water, even a dog in the foreground runs. This short six-second video attracted over a thousand views and dozens of likes.

'AI is not a substitute for the picture. It stirs it. We want viewers to ask themselves the question: 'What does the original actually look like?' And the answer is not online, but on the wall of the museum. The digital experience becomes an invitation, a visual teaser that whets the appetite for the real encounter with painting: the texture of the colour, the size of the work, the authentic energy that no screen can fully reproduce,' Farcasiu told AGERPRES on Friday.

According to him, 'animation arouses curiosity, and so the viewer comes to the museum to see the original. Because, no matter how intelligent AI is, true art is lived in front of the painting.'

Using AI online to bring hundreds of years old paintings to life helps the Brukenthal National Museum attract more audiences to its galleries: 'for young people it is a familiar and captivating visual language, for art lovers, a new key to interpretation, for the general public, a rediscovery of heritage in a living and current form,' says Farcasiu.

The Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu is one of the oldest and most valuable in Europe, having been opened to the public over two centuries ago, in 1817. AGERPRES (RO - editing by: Isabela Paulescu; EN - writing by: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)