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Spotting a forged painting is a laborious process, typically involving hours of painstaking analysis by art experts.
But a computer programme could slash the time it takes by spotting the telltale patterns and techniques used by individual artists.
Using high-resolution scans of paintings, the Authentic software builds up a library of characteristics, such as brushstrokes, colours and type of canvas used, that form a “fingerprint” for a particular artist. A painting can then be compared against this fingerprint to help experts decide whether it is a fake.
Igor Berezhnoy of the University of Maastricht, who developed the software with colleague Eric Postma, said the technique was not designed to replace the opinions of art historians but as a tool that would help them with their work. “We do not play art experts and we do not make decisions,” he said.
“We analyse, we give the data, the art experts make the final decision.”
Dr Berezhnoy used high-resolution transparencies of 195 paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, eight of which are known fakes, to train his software to recognise the painter’s style and techniques.
Dr Berezhnoy said that, when examining a possible forgery, detailed information can be projected back on to the art to show what parts of the new painting are similar to a painter’s style.
Alok Jha
