{"id":272089,"date":"2026-02-07T08:53:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/272089\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T08:53:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:53:06","slug":"ai-analysis-casts-doubt-on-van-eyck-paintings-in-italian-and-us-museums-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/272089\/","title":{"rendered":"AI analysis casts doubt on Van Eyck paintings in Italian and US museums | Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

An analysis of two paintings in museums in the US and Italy by the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck<\/a> has raised a profound question: what if neither were by Van Eyck?<\/p>\n

Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, the name given to near-identical unsigned paintings hanging in the Philadelphia<\/a> Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Turin, represent two of the small number of surviving works by one of western art\u2019s greatest masters, revered for his naturalistic portraits and religious subjects.<\/p>\n

The only problem is that neither version may actually be by his hand.<\/p>\n

Scientific tests involving artificial intelligence on the paintings conducted by Art<\/a> Recognition, a Swiss company that collaborates on research with Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has been unable to detect any of Van Eyck\u2019s brushstrokes. It has concluded that the Philadelphia picture was \u201c91% negative\u201d and that the Turin version was \u201c86% negative\u201d.<\/p>\n

The version of Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata on display in Turin. Photograph: Heritage Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Till-Holger Borchert, one of the leading Van Eyck scholars and director of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen, said the Van Eyck findings supported scholars who had suggested that both versions were studio paintings \u2013 produced in the artist\u2019s workshop but not necessarily by him.<\/p>\n

He said that, although he was \u201csurprised\u201d by the analysis, it posed further questions that needed to be explored.<\/p>\n

Dr Carina Popovici, Art Recognition\u2019s chief executive, said that such high negative percentages for the paintings were particularly dramatic. In contrast, an analysis of another Van Eyck \u2013 The Arnolfini Portrait<\/a>, which is among the most popular paintings in the National Gallery in London \u2013 said it was 89% likely to be authentic.<\/p>\n

Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, by Jan van Eyck. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n

She said she had also been taken aback by the findings: \u201cI expected that, if one painting was negative, the other would be positive. But no, both came out negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

She told the Guardian: \u201cI\u2019m guessing that the Philadelphia and Turin museums won\u2019t be happy. It\u2019s not good news on these paintings.\u201d The Philadelphia and Turin museums have been contacted for comment. Critics have contended that a paintings\u2019 condition and later restorations may affect such AI-based brushstroke analysis.<\/p>\n

Dr Noah Charney, an art historian who discussed the initial Philadelphia painting\u2019s findings on his podcast<\/a>, described Art Recognition\u2019s previous analyses as \u201cremarkably accurate\u201d and said that the negative result for both pictures had been so surprising that deeper tests had been conducted to confirm the results.<\/p>\n

He said he had expected that the Turin picture would be confirmed as by Van Eyck, and that the Philadelphia version would emerge as a copy, whether from the artist\u2019s workshop or later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe negative results suggest that both of these pictures are studio works, which may mean that we have a lost original that was more fully by Van Eyck\u2019s hand than these two,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a work comes out of Van Eyck\u2019s studio, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that he actually physically painted the surface level of all aspects of it,\u201d he said on his podcast. \u201cThat\u2019s a misconception that people get from this 19th-century idea of the lone artist in a garret in Paris drinking absinthe, smoking cigarettes, wearing a beret and doing every aspect of the work themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Eyck is regarded as one of the pioneers of oil painting. \u201c[Van Eyck] didn\u2019t invent oil painting, but he perfected it so thoroughly that everyone else seemed to be working in his shadow for centuries,\u201d Charney said. \u201cHis surfaces shimmer with light in detail so fine you need a magnifying glass to take it all in. Every stone, hair, reflection, and a glint seems to be rendered with a kind of supernatural clarity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat ability to make the everyday luminous is why many consider him not only a great painter, but one of the great observers of reality in all of western art. And yet for all his fame, Van Eyck\u2019s surviving oeuvre is small: fewer than 20 paintings are universally accepted as by his own hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Gallery in London is preparing to stage an exhibition of Van Eyck portraits in November.<\/p>\n

Among previous analyses, Art Recognition detected up to 40 fake paintings that were being offered on eBay<\/a> in 2024. It also concluded in 2021 that Rubens\u2019 Samson and Delilah<\/a> in the National Gallery was \u201c91% negative\u201d, supporting critics who have long doubted that it was painted by the 17th-century Flemish master.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An analysis of two paintings in museums in the US and Italy by the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-272089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}