The team then used the model to analyze 78 other scans from works thought to be by Van Gogh and known copies, correctly weeding out some of the fakes. As their database increases in size and spans works from all periods in the artist’s life, they hope to create a digital fraud detector that will take most of the guess work out of the art historian’s job. “Through tackling these tough problems, we can advance the core technologies at the same time,” says Wang. “I anticipate computer scientists, art historians and mathematicians will collaborate more in the future.”
