From the official Google blog:

Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project

2/01/2011 06:02:00 AM

One of the things I love about working at Google is that you can come up with an idea one day and the next day start getting to work to make it a reality. That's what happened with the Art Project—a new tool we're announcing today which puts more than 1,000 works of art at your fingertips, in extraordinary detail.

It started when a small group of us who were passionate about art got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close.

We're also lucky here to have access to technology like Picasa and App Engine and to have colleagues who love a challenge—like building brand-new technology to enable Street View to go indoors! Thanks to this, and our unique collaboration with museums around the world, we were able to turn our 20% project into something you can try out for yourself today at www.googleartproject.com.

More: googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/explore-museums-and-great-works-of-art.html

I was looking at that yesterday and it literally blew me away. The Botticelli "Venus" at the Uffizzi in Florence is a great place to start. Look at the picture overall then home in on some aspect and keep enlarging. Get down to the detail of seeing the miniscule cracks in the paint. There is a feature to make your own collection of favorite pictures (including the zoomed in versions). However, cannot download to make prints, pity.

Great gift from Google, hope they continue and expand.

Yes, I know they hope to make advert money from it somehow, but so what. The museums charge admission and this is here, now and for free.

I was looking at that yesterday and it literally blew me away. The Botticelli "Venus" at the Uffizzi in Florence is a great place to start. Look at the picture overall then home in on some aspect and keep enlarging. Get down to the detail of seeing the miniscule cracks in the paint. There is a feature to make your own collection of favorite pictures (including the zoomed in versions). However, cannot download to make prints, pity.

Great gift from Google, hope they continue and expand.

Yes, I know they hope to make advert money from it somehow, but so what. The museums charge admission and this is here, now and for free.