A digital technique for art authentication

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0406398101
• Publication Date: 2004-11-25T01:24:43Z
• Authors: Siwei Lyu; Daniel Rockmore; Hany Farid
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

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 then are compared. The statistical model consists of first- and higher-order wavelet statistics. We show preliminary results from our analysis of 13 drawings that at various times have been attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder; these results 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 Pietro Perugino and again achieve an analysis agreeing with expert opinion.