Painting Attributed to Raphael Thanks to Artificial Intelligence Goes on Public View for the First Time

Earlier this year, a 40-year debate over a painting known as the de Brécy Tondo was settled thanks to artificial intelligence–based facial recognition software, with the painting now considered to have likely been the famed Renaissance artist Raphael. Now, that painting has gone on public display for the first time at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, England. 

For years, the de Brécy Tondo was assumed to be a copy of a work by Raphael made in the Victorian era, in large part because of its resemblance to his Sistine Madonna altarpiece. 

Hassan Ugail, a professor at the University of Bradford and the director of the university’s center of visual computing, developed an artificial intelligence model that could identify paintings by Old Masters and recently said he was sure the tondo was by Raphael.

“My AI models look far deeper into a picture than the human eye, comparing details such as the brush strokes and pigments. Testing the Tondo using this new AI model has shown startling results, confirming it is most likely by Raphael,” Ugail told the Guardian.

Ugail’s modern methods are bolstered by the opinion of academics who studied the painting, including one of his colleagues at the University of Bradford, Howell Edwards, a molecular spectroscopy expert who found the pigments used in de Brécy Tondo firmly placed the work in the Renaissance period.

“Together with my previous work using facial recognition and combined with previous research by my fellow academics, we have concluded the Tondo and the Sistine Madonna are undoubtedly by the same artist,” Ugail told the Guardian.

Ugail says his program, in tandem with human expertise, could lead to “easier authentication” of artworks and “greater transparency.”