Through AI, something peculiar has been discovered about a Raphael painting.
According to recent research, Raphael never painted a particular face in Madonna della Rosa, contrary to his prior assertions.
The face depicted Saint Joseph; an artificial neural network uncovered its secret.
Whether or not Raphael painted the original was a point of contention among art historians for quite some time. The employment of AI has led experts to speculate that Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, painted the face.
This is the first time nuances of art that were previously hidden have been analyzed by artificial intelligence. A unique dataset was created using extra Raphael artworks to train the AI software.
A ResNet50, a tweaked pre-trained architecture made by Microsoft, was their application. They combined ResNet50 with a Support Vector Machine’s more traditional machine-learning technique.
Consequently, the computer recognized Raphael’s distinctive brushstrokes, color schemes, and shading methods. After studying the Madonna della Rosa, the AI system noticed a few subtle differences in the appearance of St. Joseph’s face.
Theoretical computer scientist and mathematician Hassan Ugail of the United Kingdom’s University of Bradford has asserted that computers can detect minuscule information that people cannot.
Using their innovative method, the researchers could positively identify Raphael’s paintings 98% of the time.
An expert’s estimation places the painting of the Madonna della Rosa’s completion year between 1518 and 1520. However, it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that art historians began to question whether Raphael had painted the whole scene.
With the help of AI, specialists could soon have a clear answer.
Ugail firmly believed that artificial intelligence would not eliminate human workers’ jobs.
In his explanation, he said that determining the artwork’s authenticity involves considering many elements, such as its origin, pigments, and general quality.
There is a lot of hope for future advances in art history from the still-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI).
