The nearly identical paintings hang in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Royal Palace in Turin. The artwork depicts Saint Francis of Assisi with wounds similar to those suffered by Jesus during the crucifixion (stigmata).
The paintings are unsigned, but are still among only about ten works that experts reasonably unanimously claim were definitely created by van Eyck, the artist born in the 1390s in what is now the Netherlands.
This assessment may now change after the works were reviewed using a new AI-based analysis method, The Guardian reports.
The Swiss company Art Recognition, together with the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, examined the brush strokes that gave the paintings color. The researchers concluded that they did not resemble the hand movements the Flemish master used to create his other surviving works.
According to the analysis method, the painting hanging in Philadelphia was “with 91 percent certainty” not painted by Jan van Eyck and the one in Turin “with 89 percent certainty” was not created by Flemings.
However, according to art connoisseur Till-Holger Borchert, director of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museet in Aachen, there is much evidence that the paintings were created in the same studio where van Eyck worked in the early 15th century.
The result in the new Analysis alone is not evidence that someone else created the artwork attributed to one of the greatest oil painters of the Renaissance. But it is a strong indication. The new method proved to be accurate when other work was examined in more detail.
Even van Eyck’s perhaps most famous work, The Betrothal of Arnolfini, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, was analyzed using the AI method. There is an 89 percent probability that it was an original by the Flemish master.
Critics of the new method claim that the accuracy of the analysis method depends on the condition of the painting and that subsequent restorations may affect the result.
Facts.Jan van Eyck
The Flemish artist Jan van Eyck was born near Maastricht in what is now the Netherlands at the end of the 14th century.
He is known for his realistic oil paintings with Christian motifs and is considered one of the most influential artists of the Hungarian Renaissance.
Only a few works by the Flemish artist have survived and several works are unsigned.
Source: Netherlands Institute of Art History
