Nine artworks and artefacts from museums around the world to view up-close online

The bad news is that London’s museums and galleries have shut their doors. The good news is that this doesn’t have to stop you looking at their collections. In fact, virtual visiting is the best way to go when it comes to at least some items in great institutions.

Just how easy is it to see the most famous pieces at peak tourist season, and how likely that you can afford a beautiful object your full attention with a school party in the same room? The websites of almost all museums and galleries allow for digital viewing, and it’s the perfect way to see detail. There are extraordinary high-resolution images online which allow you to see brushstrokes, surface texture and tiny details.

Lawrence Chiles, head of digital services at The National Gallery, is cheerfully unfazed by the crisis. “The gallery has a strong digital presence,” he says. “All of our main painting collection is available on our website, and some of it on other platforms that bring together cultural institutions, such as Art UK.” He recommends #museumsfromhome, where developments and content are shared on social media. Google Street View, meanwhile, allows for a virtual wander through museums, or there’s the Google Arts & Culture app which, among other things, lets you transport a van Gogh into your own living room via your smartphone.

Here are some suggestions for objects from wonderful institutions to look at online. Some aren’t on display in the physical gallery because of space or fragility, or they’re on loan or being restored; some are, in fact, best viewed virtually.

Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, Anthony van Dyck, National Gallery

This is an imposing portrait of the king — the greatest British royal patron of the arts — by his pre-eminent court painter. The king was tiny; on horseback he seems a man of stature. The picture has been under restoration for some time and was due to be returned to the gallery soon. Close inspection reveals the exquisite painting of the horse’s mane, reflecting the lustrous mane of the king himself.

See it here: nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings

Rinaldo and Armida, Nicolas Poussin, Dulwich Picture Gallery

The gallery’s online collection includes 250 paintings that aren’t currently on display. One is this dramatic 1630 picture by Poussin, of a scene from the epic poem Jerusalem Liberated by Torquato Tasso — an encounter between the crusader Rinaldo and the Saracen sorceress, Armida. A little cupid stays Armida’s arm as she is about to strike Rinaldo, and she falls in love with the curly-headed youth. Then again, it could be an allegory of the martial virtues restrained by prudence. She wears a cloak of Poussin’s characteristic blue.

See it here: dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/explore-the-collection

The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, Sir John Soane’s Museum

The Explore Soane page on the museum’s website lets you digitally visit the Model Room, where there’s a cork replica of the celebrated temple — you can twizzle it around in 3D. The building was a particular favourite of the architect Soane, who declared that “the uncommon taste, lightness and elegance of every part of this beautiful composition has never been surpassed, nor can be sufficiently admired”. It was adapted by Soane in a number of his own works.

See it here: explore.soane.org

The Admonitions Scroll, British Museum

There are several ways to view the museum’s collections digitally through its website — I’d especially recommend the treasures of the Waddesdon Bequest – but this scroll viewed via the museum’s page on Google Arts & Culture is an example of how a digital view can enable you to examine an object that is never on view in its entirety. It is a handscroll in nine scenes on silk and paper by the fourth-century painter, Gu Khaizi. It illustrates a parodic poem by Zhang Hua concerning the excesses of an empress. The level of detail, including the surface texture, is astonishing.

See it here: artsandculture.google.com

Bust of Nefertiti, Neues Museum, Berlin

This is an extraordinary and famous piece, apparently sculpted by Thutmose in 1345 BC. It’s the bust of the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten, reputedly the most beautiful woman in the world — and she still conveys this beauty, notwithstanding a missing eye. The effect of the bust is pretty terrifying. The virtual view shows you the piece in situ.

See it here: artsandculture.google.com

Ship Automaton, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This is just fabulous: a ship model from 1585 which moves across a table centrepiece with the men on board beating drums and, as a pièce de résistance, its little canons fire (hear it on the YouTube video). It’s in the Kunstkammer, the Renaissance and Baroque treasure chamber of the museum.

See it here: khm.at/objektdb

Joseph Moxon Pocket Globe, British Library

The British Library offers online access to parts of its enormous collection, including maps (check out the Klencke Atlas), a sound archive and some illuminated manuscripts. It is now launching close virtual viewing of 30 of its historic globes, which are fragile and normally inaccessible. The first seven go online this week, including Joseph Moxon’s “pocket” globe from 1679: a little terrestrial globe tucked inside a celestial shell showing the stars with figures of the Zodiac.

See it here: bl.uk/collection-items

The Cole Astronomical Compendium Dial, National Maritime Museum

The senior curator at the museum, Robert Blyth, describes this as the Tudor equivalent of the smartphone. It’s an extraordinary object, made up of five brass leaves with a number of different scientific instruments. It can be used as a compass, a calendar and a geometric square, from which it is possible to calculate anything from high and low tides and the phases of the moon to the height of buildings. It’s rather beautiful too, and is said to have belonged to Sir Francis Drake.

See it here: collections.rmg.co.uk

The Medici Venus, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This glorious sculpture — originally brightly coloured — has had a chequered history, moving from Rome to Florence to (briefly) France and back; its owners include Ferdinand de Medici and Napoleon. Unusually, we know the sculptor: Cleomenes, son of Apollodorus, a sculptor working in Athens during the 1st century BC.

See it here: uffizi.it/en/artworks