Real or fake? Artificial Intelligence determines the authenticity of Rembrandt's etchings

Abstract

In addition to his many famous paintings, Rembrandt created hundreds of etchings and thousands of drawings.The question is, was the family heirloom print really made by the master himself? To check its provenance,an art expert will begin by looking at the style of the print. Next, he will check the structure of the paper.This contains the impression of the screen or mould used to produce the paper.To determine the year in which the print was made, he will compare the imprint with the paper structures of dated etchings. It is laborious work, each of the hundreds of paper mills in those days having had a large number of different paper moulds in use. Researchers at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science at Delft University of Technology have recently developed software and a database that enables a computer to take over the experts job of looking for and identifying paper samples. The image processing techniques used to analyse the prints have also stirred the interest of forensic investigators, the police, and the ministry of justice