The Sistine Chapel was decked out with LED lights on Wednesday, and the results are stunning.
The chapel now has 7,000 LED lights, which add quite a new dimension to Michelangelo's 15th-century frescoes. Osram, a German light company that's one of the partners behind the project, said the LED lights will "protect the artworks while enabling much stronger lighting."
The LEDs are far stronger than the chapel's previous low lights, and they also use up to 90 percent less electricity, Osram noted. The $2.3 billion light project is part of LED4Art, an E.U.-funded project that encourages energy efficiency as well as light quality.
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The electricians weren't messing around, either — Osram analyzed the frescoes' pigmentation to find the "color temperature" that would be "tailor-made for Michelangelo's colors." Color temperature controls the LED color, and for the Sistine Chapel, the sweet spot was between 3,000 and 4,000 Kelvin. Check out the stunning new lights, which bring out the frescoes' contrast to a dazzling degree, below. --Meghan DeMaria
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