AI is capable of being trained for examining image details that the human eye may miss out. Now, an AI neural network was able to pinpoint something odd about a face in one painting made by Raphael and discover that the artwork wasn't actually made by the said artist.

Madonna della Rosa Debate

The face in the painting is St Joseph's face, which can be observed in the top left of the Madonna della Rosa painting.

For a long time, scholars have been questioning if the artwork was an original piece made by Raphael. Though wide evidence is necessary to conclude the provenance of the artwork, a new analysis method grounded on an AI algorithm supports those who think that another artist was behind the creation of the painting.

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AI Examines Hidden Art Details

Researchers from the US and the UK were able to make a custom analysis algorithm that is based on the known works of the Italian artist. Their efforts were discussed in the "Deep transfer learning for visual analysis and attribution of paintings by Raphael" study.

Hassan Ugali, a computer scientists and mathematician from the University of Bradford, explains that with a deep feature analysis, they made use of pictures of authenticated paintings of Raphael to train the computer to recognize the artist's style to an intricate extent, being able to note the artist's color palette, brushstrokes, shading, and other art aspects.

Typically, machine learning processes typically require training from a vast sample pool. This is something that is not always available when it comes to a single artist's life works. In this specific case, the scientists modified a pre-trained architecture, known as ResNet50, that Microsoft developed. They coupled this with a usual machine learning technique known as Support Vector Machine.

Previously, the method displayed an accuracy level of 98% when it came to the identification of Raphael's works. In most cases, it was trained with whole pictures. However, in this case, the team also tasked the algorithm to examine individual faces.

The Child, the Madonna, and St John were all found to be created by Raphael's hand. However, this was not the case for St Joseph. In earlier debates regarding the authenticity of the painting, the researchers noted that the face of St Joseph appeared to be less well done compared to others of the same frame.

Ugali explains that when they tested the whole della Rossa, the results appeared to be inconclusive. When they tested different parts of the painting, the face of St Joseph appeared to be unlikely to have been made by Rapahel.

Giulio Romano, a pupik of Raphael, could have been in-charge of this fourth face, though this remains uncertain. Nevertheless, this case serves as another example of how technological advancements can shed light on classic painting secrets.

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