Left: false-color image of the VST pointing of NGC 4472, trimmed to the same size as that in Fig. 4. The magnitude scale adopted to produce the picture is shown at the bottom. The last clearly visible isophote is at μ_g ~ 27 mag/arcsec². Right: residual image obtained by subtracting from the left picture the galaxy model described in Sect. 5.1.2. Masks adopted to exclude features from the fitting are shown as circles.