AI revealed a nasty secret about a Raphael painting: the artist was tricked while painting

An artificial intelligence neural network detected something unusual in a famous Raphael painting. It turned out that one of the faces in the painting “Madonna with the Rose” was not painted by Raphael.

The face in the painting, painted by another, belongs to Saint Joseph, who is depicted in the upper left corner of the canvas.

The fact is that scholars have long debated whether this painting belongs to Raphael. More evidence is needed to make a final conclusion about the painting’s authenticity. But the AI ​​analysis led to the theory that some parts of Raphael’s painting were painted by another artist.

Scientists from the United Kingdom and the United States have developed an algorithm based on works believed to be the work of the Italian master, writes ScienceAlert.

“We used images of original Raphael paintings to teach the computer to recognize his style in the smallest detail, starting with brush strokes, color palette and shades,” says mathematician and study author Hassan Ugale of the University of Bradford in the UK .

“The computer sees much deeper than the human eye, at the microscopic level,” says the expert.

In the painting, the Madonna, Child and Saint John are by Raphael, but Saint Joseph was painted by another artist. Previous studies have also noted that the face of Saint Joseph is less well executed than the other faces in the painting.

It is possible that the second author of the painting was one of Raphael’s students, Giulio Romano, but there is still no evidence of this.

According to experts, “Madonna with the Rose” was painted on canvas in 1518-1520. And it was not until the mid-1800s that art historians began to suspect that Raphael might not have painted his paintings himself.