A Rembrandt painting that has been made incomplete since it was clipped so it can fit between two doors at Amsterdam City Hall in 1715 has been restored to its original form, thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Dutch master painter Rembrandt van Rijn made the painting, called Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, and commonly known as The Night Watch, in 1642, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. It was a large painting measuring 363 cm × 437 cm (11.91 ft × 14.34 ft) when it was made. 

It was such a large painting that the characters in it were almost life-sized and Rembrandt's dramatic use of light and shadows created the perception of motion. However, when the painting was trimmed in 1715, it lost about 60cm (2ft) from the left, 22cm from the top, 12cm from the bottom and 7cm from the right. And so it remained for over 300 years until technology came to the rescue and now, art lovers in the 21st century can marvel at the full, unaltered composition of the painting, just like Rembrandt rendered it.

To make this restoration, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the Night Watch is displayed, fed the AI (Artificial Intelligence) with two images. First with a high-resolution scan of the original painting, and the second, a painted copy done by Gerrit Lundens before the trimming.

Thus, the researchers had the AI reproduce the original material from a copy, using Rembrandt’s original style.

“Our attempt here is to make a best guess, without the hand of an artist, into what The Night Watch looked like,” Robert Erdmann, senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum, told the BBC.

The resulting painting reveals three new figures: two militiamen and a young boy. It also offers a clearer view of the boy in the left foreground who is running away from the militia. These revelations help us see the full portrayal of Rembrandt's vision, and completing this vision with the exact style the Dutch master used to grab the viewer’s attention and drag it from place to place, by creating the illusion of motion.

The AI-completed painting, which museum officials say is better than the Lundens copy, was then printed and mounted next to the original painting so visitors to the museum can admire the closest reproduction of the whole painting as it was originally produced by Rembrandt, before the clippings.