AI Model Reveals New Information About 17Th-Century El Greco Painting

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new machine-learning tool from Case Western Reserve University is testing a question that has long divided art historians: how many hands actually shaped a painting?

Developed by a dozen researchers in Cleveland, Ohio, the system is called PATCH, short for pairwise assignment training for classifying heterogeneity. Published in Science Advances, the model compares 1-centimeter-square image patches from artworks known to be by a single artist. It then measures consistency in brushwork and paint texture against a second work whose authorship is less certain, helping indicate whether the same painter, a different individual, or a workshop may have been involved.

The study centered on Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco (1541–1614). The team tested PATCH on“Christ on the Cross,” which has been entirely attributed to El Greco himself, and“The Baptism of Christ,” long believed to include the work of El Greco and at least one other artist. That second painting is generally thought to have been completed by his son and apprentices in the decade after his death. PATCH, however, pointed in a different direction: the model suggested that“The Baptism of Christ” may have been painted primarily by El Greco, with little or no workshop contribution.

The researchers are careful not to present the system as a final authority. Art attribution in the early modern period remains complicated, especially because workshop production was common and documentary evidence is often incomplete. The paper instead frames PATCH as a tool that can complement established connoisseurship, technical analysis, and archival research.

That caution matters. Recent claims that AI had definitively settled the authorship of a long-contested Raphael work drew criticism from museum professionals, underscoring how sensitive attribution debates remain. In that context, PATCH is less a verdict machine than a new kind of evidence - one that may help scholars ask sharper questions about paintings whose histories are still being rewritten.

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