New software detects fake art
p2pnet.net News:- Software to help authenticate paintings, prints and drawings has been developed by researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the US.
Using high resolution digital images of drawings and paintings, the computer scientists capture data about pen or pencil stroke patterns and other elements that represent an artist’s style or aesthetic signature.
The data are then used to discover consistencies and inconsistencies within a single piece of artwork, or among works by the same artist.
“Similar methods have been used to analyze works of literature, like assigning authorship of different parts of The Federalist Papers to Alexander Hamilton and James Madison,” says Hany Farid, associate professor of computer science. “We can find things in art work that are unique to the artist, like the subtle choice of words or phrasing and cadence that are characteristic of a certain writer.”
Farid, with Siwei Lyu, a PhD student, and Daniel Rockmore, a professor of mathematics and computer science, tested their technique on a painting by Perugino thought to be the work of multiple hands, and 13 other works that had been at some point attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
They confirmed what art experts and historians had already concluded – that the Madonna with Child by Perugino, owned by Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art, shows evidence of at least four artists.
Of the 13 Bruegel drawings (digital images of the Bruegels were collected with help from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City), only eight are authentic.
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See:-
subtle choice - Researchers develop digital technique for art authentication, Dartmouth College, November 22, 2004
