A nude portrait of a crouching woman, hidden beneath the surface of a Pablo Picasso painting, has been revealed using Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Imaging Technology and 3D printing.
Dubbed “The Lonesome Crouching Nude,” the recreation is the work of Oxia Palus, a company that uses technology to resurrect lost art, according to a statement sent to CNN on Monday.
Picasso painted over the figure when making “The Blind Man’s Meal” in 1903. The nude had been partially revealed by a superimposed X-ray fluorescence (XRF) image, but Oxia Palus has now “brought the hidden work to life back to life,” according to the statement.
In order to do so, the company used XRF imaging and image processing to reveal the outline of the hidden painting, and then trained artificial intelligence to add brushstrokes to the portrait in the style of Picasso.
It then generated a height map of the portrait to give it texture, and printed the image onto canvas using 3D printing technology. While X-ray images are useful in revealing images that were painted over, the AI adds another layer to our analysis.
According to Cann the nude dates from Picasso’s Blue Period, early in his career, .
Ty Murphy, a Picasso specialist at London-based due-diligence firm Domos Art Advisors, said the AI-produced painting looks like a Picasso Blue Period, but under close scrutiny an expert would probably be able to recognize that it wasn’t an original. However, continued developments in machine learning and 3D printing should make for even more accurate work in the future, he added.
Source : CNN
