It may be melodramatic to ascribe a somewhat suicidal quality to the synthetic red lakes, but they did self-destruct, which reverberates with van Gogh’s death by his own hand barely three months later, and it’s worth noting that he could have chosen more lasting reds.

The show’s juiciness is also a matter of science, spurred by the latest technology. The reunion occasioned research into van Gogh’s use of color, specifically his choice of a bright but unstable orange-scarlet version of red lake.

Not surprisingly digital technology is also used by the organizers, Susan Alyson Stein, a curator in the Met’s European painting department, and Charlotte Hale, one of the museum’s painting conservators, to present their findings via two short sleek slide shows. Appearing on monitors facing the paintings, the digital images take us beneath the works’ surfaces, magnifying molecules of color, and into their pasts.

Moving back and forth between the images and the real thing helps us see more deeply still.