A Digital Technique for Art Authentication

Combining the great strides in computer power over the past several years with advances in programming technologies and innovative analysis methods, new and unique means for the authentication of fine art are being discovered. Leading the way in the forensic science analysis of fine art is a group of mathematicians, grad students and professors at Dartmouth College. They are incorporating the use of high resolution photography, computers and digital scans with advanced mathematical formulas to analyze fine art. This is also the same group of Dartmouth College scientist that have been analyzing digital images to determine if they have been altered.

Dan Rockmore, one of the Dartmouth College mathematicians is leading the scientific efforts. Rockmore states "The fact that you can put everything on the computer means that everything is numbers. As soon as everything is numbers, it makes perfect sense to ask mathematical questions about what the numbers represent."

If Rockmore’s scientific approach is correct, proven, and perhaps more importantly accepted by the art world that mathematical formulas of art converted into computer code may be able to determine the authenticity of fine art over that of connoisseurs and established art authorities and boards, the fine art world is probably going to be in for some surprises. I am sure it would impact many fine collections held both in private hands and in museums.

The following paper by the Dartmouth College group gives some interesting insight into forensic art analysis and authentication at the highest level.

A Digital Technique for Art Authentication

We describe a computational technique for authenticating works of art, specifically, paintings and drawings, from high resolution digital scans of the original works. This approach builds a statistical model of an artist from the scans of a set of authenticated works, against which new works are then compared. The statistical model consists of first and higher-order wavelet statistics. We show preliminary results from our analysis of thirteen drawings that have at various times been attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which confirm expert authentications. We also apply these techniques to the problem of determining the number of artists that may have contributed to a painting attributed to Perugino and again achieve an analysis agreeing with expert opinion.

It probably wasn't long after people began paying money for art that a lucrative business in forging art was born. And it probably wasn't too much later that techniques for detecting art forgeries emerged. Even today, the early techniques for authentication remain pre-eminent.

By and large these are based on connoisseurship and so rely upon the discerning eyes of a few experts who are steeped in the work and life of the artist in question. Their opinion may be informed by the catalogue raisson which is the current acknowledged authoritative work on the artist's oeuvre. Other desiderata may include provenance which might be traced back to the artist's circle or his collectors and makes possible the comparison of the work's implicit biography with the histories of related works, or even a detailed analysis of any signature that may be present.

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