The blue truth on King David's chest

Scientists at the MIRA Research Institute at the University of Twente have found a solution to the blue seal on King David's breast in a famous nude painting from the seventeenth century.

Rembrandt van Rijn list

It was a picture of Bathsheba painted by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1654 to describe the nude image of King David's wife in the bath. Later in the 1980s the painting was seen as a symbol of breast cancer when two Australian surgeons explained the blue mark on the chest and the swollen left armpit of Bathsheba as a sign of the disease.

However, using computer simulations, scientists at the University of Twente have demonstrated that Bathsheba's green mark on the breast is not really caused by breast cancer. They first used millions of simulations of photons (light particles) with different wavelengths that were picked up on the chest to form a tumor.

Later, the scientists observed how many photons returned and what colors there were. Through 700 hours of work, the calculation of the blue light was fired back, showing that the tumor was deep in the skin about 1-3mm. But in fact, breast cancer tumors are much deeper than this level and it does not show any kind of color. So it is difficult to determine the color of Bathsheba's breast due to breast cancer.