Teaching a computer to spot a bogus Bruegel
Mathematicians apply a technique from vision research to find fake art
When Dan Rockmore viewed an exhibit of drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 2001, he had no idea that his mathematical career was about to change.
The curator pointed out faked Bruegel drawings so skillfully done that art historians had thought the imitations authentic for decades. Then she showed Rockmore minute idiosyncrasies of the pen strokes in the Bruegel drawings that were different in the fakes. His mathematical imagination was triggered. I could teach a computer to see that, he thought.
Rockmore, a mathematician at Dartmouth College, knew of statistical techniques to detect individual styles in other arts, such as writing. Back in the 1960s, Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace had statistically analyzed a dozen essays from The Federalist Papers whose authorship was disputed. Mosteller and Wallace compared the frequencies with which the essays used non-contextual words such as “by” and “from” and showed that all 12 were far more consistent with the writing style of James Madison than that of Alexander Hamilton or John Jay.