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Well, for centuries people called the painting "night watch" because the colors were so faded, they thought it depicted night time, eventhough it's really dayli

• cameron_b 6y ago
  It isn't so much that colors in paintings such as this fade, as it is that the varnish becomes opaque and occludes the colors beneath. Environmental factors, dust, and such contribute to how you see the colors, but they haven't gone away. Much of the work of conservation is actually removing the varnish and re-varnishing it. They make photographs like this to help determine -how much- varnish should be removed, and to hedge against damage in the process. Often they must re-apply colors when the removal causes flakes or disturbs unknown faults in the structure of the painting.
• seanhunter 6y ago
  Have you been to the Rijksmuseum and seen the painting? the colours are incredibly intense and most definitely not faded. If anything the opposite is the problem - the varnish that's been put on the painting is pretty dark.
  • buboard 6y ago
    > For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish, which gave the incorrect impression that it depicted a night scene, leading to the name by which it is now commonly known.[7]... The varnish was removed only in the 1940s.