Girl with a Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa recreated with nanotechnology

A technique that uses nanoscale structures to reproduce colour has been employed to make copies of famous paintings, and could also help fight counterfeiting

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

Miniature versions of famous paintings, including Girl with a Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa, have been created using nanotechnology. Each is just a few millimetres across.

Ting Xu at Nanjing University in China and his colleagues made these minuscule masterpieces using nanostructures that manipulate light rays that hit them, reflecting only specific colours, while suppressing all others.

The technique is inspired by insects such as butterflies that have intricate colours in their wings that are created through structural means, rather than …