AI Detects Mysterious Details Hidden in Raphael’s Paintings

SAN FRANCISCO – Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated its ability to see details in images that elude human vision.

This time, an AI neural network has identified something unusual about the face in Raphael’s painting: The face was not painted by Raphael himself.

The face in question belongs to St. Joseph, who is visible at the top left of the famous painting “Madonna della Rosa” (or Madonna of the Rose).

Experts have long debated the authenticity of this painting. While a variety of evidence is needed to determine the provenance of a work of art, a new analysis method based on AI algorithms has sided with those who believe that at least some of the strokes in the painting came from the hand of another artist.

As reported by Science Alert, researchers from the UK and US developed a special analysis algorithm based on authenticated works by Raphael.

“Using deep feature analysis, we used authenticated images of Raphael’s paintings to train a computer to recognize his style to a very detailed level, from brush strokes, color palette, shading, and every aspect of the work,” explains Hassan Ugail, a mathematician and computer scientists from the University of Bradford in England, in December when the researchers’ findings were published.

“Computers see much deeper than the human eye, down to the microscopic level.”

Machine learning processes usually require many examples for training, something that is not always available in the case of an artist’s work of art. In this case, the team modified a pre-trained architecture developed by Microsoft called ResNet50, combined with a traditional machine learning technique called Support Vector Machine (SVM).

This research shows the huge potential of AI in helping us understand and analyze works of art.

With its ability to see details invisible to the human eye, AI can help us to uncover the mysteries surrounding works of art and gain a deeper understanding of the work of famous artists like Raphael.

(wbs)