Hyperspectral imaging of Vingboons View of Havana

(1665)

The SEPIA Quantitative hyperspectral imager of the Nationaal Archief (National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague) was used to record spectral images of the drawing “View of Havana”, that was manufactured around 1665 in the workshop of Johannes Vingboons in Amsterdam. Often several very similar maps were made, using basically the same motif and arrangement of all major features that were fixed by copying from the original sketch. Many details were then freely varied by the artist who coloured the sketch, sometimes deviating also from the sketch or dropping certain outlined features entirely.

The 70 spectral images recorded with the SEPIA instrument were further processed using the so-called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method, which is a powerful mathematical method for extracting the most important spectral features from all bands. The false-colour image resulting from the PCA processing high-lights the outlines from the underlying sketch of the landscape, which had probably been drawn with pencil. It clearly shows a rectangular feature outlined at the foot of the hill, which may have been copied from an original drawing but was not worked out in the colouring of the map.

 

 

Real-colour image

False- colour image

Johannes Vingboons, View of Havana, ca. 1665, inv. no. 4.VELH 619-57, Nationaal Archief (The Hague, Netherlands)

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