At a conference on advanced technology and cutting-edge facial recognition, researchers said they used artificial intelligence to identify a circular painting of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus, known as de Brécy Tondo or Tondo. I’m here. In short, it could have been painted by the Italian master Raphael.
However, many art historians argue that Tondo is the result of another painter’s copying of one of Raphael’s most famous works. Our Lady of SistineHe painted the latter around 1513 for the Church of San Sisto in Piacenza, Italy. However, since the 18th century, Our Lady of Sistine It is mainly displayed in palaces and museums in Dresden, Germany.
The new analysis did not convince everyone. Instead, art collector George Lester Winward purchased it in 1981 from an aristocratic family related to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England, of his 40-year debate about the origins of the tondo. The latest round. Before his death, Winward founded a trust to preserve his art collection and allow his works to be studied. Prior to the new discovery, Raman spectroscopy and his X-ray examination of Tondo’s pigment, as well as historical research, suggested that Raphael may have painted it. However, many experts disputed that attribution.
For the latest look, researchers used an artificial intelligence system known as a deep neural network. The system had been trained in facial recognition for months. The program examines thousands of aspects of Tondo’s face, Our Lady of Sistine, Proportions, colors, textures, shading, “all this and more,” says Hassan Ugail, a professor of visual computing at the University of Bradford in England who conducted the analysis.
According to the AI, Madonna’s face in both drawings is 97% similar, and the child’s face is 86% similar. Such a high degree of agreement indicates that both paintings were painted by the same artist, he says, Ugail. “It’s not 100% certain, but it’s very likely.”
Many art historians are still unconvinced, but they suggest an exact resemblance to Tondo Our Lady of Sistine I’m talking “It’s not a variation in the interesting sense at all,” says Cammy Brothers, who studies Italian He Renaissance and Mediterranean art and architecture at Northeastern University. “This is not a painting of Raphael or his pupil, but a later copy of Raphael,” she says.
London-based art historian Nigel Yip and University of Southern California’s Lisa Pong agree. Ip objects for which the AI examined only surface similarity. “Artist attribution must also consider social and historical factors, such as workshop conventions and anachronisms in the use of materials, which AI cannot do,” he says.
What’s more, the Renaissance was a “culture of imitation,” Pong says. “Raphael’s work was often copied, even while he was alive.” You may have actually detected a copy.th-Pigments of the century that look real, she says.
Timothy Benoy, Honorary Secretary of the trust that now owns Bresey Tondo, has heard such objections before. But he is convinced that Raphael created Tondo. Our Lady of SistineAccording to Benois, both works were painted on canvas, which Raphael was unfamiliar with at the time. Instead, artists painted more often on fresco plaster, or on paper or parchment (parchment made from calfskin). “Raphael needed to rehearse painting on canvas, and Tondo would have been the occasion,” says Benois.
Brecy Tondo is now closed. But the next step in the effort to verify its authenticity will be to have it examined by an art expert, Benoy said.
