French TV series uses 3D animation to dissect masterpieces

A new French television series, "I segreti dei capolavori" (the Italian-dubbed version of an Arte original), uses 3D animation to deconstruct famous paintings by artists such as Seurat, Kandinsky, Courbet, and Velázquez. Each 25-minute episode isolates graphic elements within a canvas, animating them against a fixed background to create a three-dimensional representation. This technique allows the show's creators to section and narrate the stories behind the figures in the artwork. The series aired in Italy on Rai 5 in September. Director Carlos Franklin, a Colombian artist, is already working on a next step: transforming Hieronymus Bosch's "Temptations of Saint Anthony" triptych into a virtual world explorable via VTR technology, considered the new frontier of entertainment.