Technology
Lost painting found HIDDEN beneath famous Picasso portrait using AI X-ray scanner after 120 years
ARTIFICIAL intelligence has brought to life a hidden painting beneath a Picasso masterpiece.
Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Crouching Beggar’ was created in 1902 and it seems the Spanish artist painted it on top of one of his friend’s creations.
This is the original Picasso painting called The Crouching Beggar[/caption]
X-ray imaging of The Crouching Beggar revealed a faint outline of the painting beneath back in 2018.
Experts have now used AI to recreate what the original painting looked like.
They think it’s a painting of a park near Barcelona by an artist called Santiago Rusiñol.
Rusiñol was a friend of Picasso and may have given him the canvas.
This is a coloured reconstruction of the painting that Picasso painted on top of[/caption]
It’s thought Picasso used the hills in the drawing to create the shape of the crouching woman’s back in his own painting.
Researchers at Oxia Palus, a company that aims to reconstruct the world’s lost art, used AI to create a coloured version of the faint outline that was discovered.
They also used a technique called spectroscopic imaging and 3D printing to recreate the landscape.
The finished result is a serene and rather green scene.
We don’t know for sure how close it is to the original but efforts were made to make it as Rusiñol-like as possible.
The reconstructed painting was created in the style of Rusiñol and AI helped to recreate his brush strokes.
Oxia Palus’ co-founder, George Cann, said: “As we use more AI to accelerate the identification and reconstruction of critically important lost art, we will have a highly significant impact on enabling a better understanding of the interwoven history of art and society.”
Oxia Palus is now selling 100 versions of the recreated painting.
Artificial Intelligence explained
Here’s what you need to know
- Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, is a type of computer software
- Typically, a computer will do what you tell it to do
- But artificial intelligence simulates the human mind, and can make its own deductions, inferences or decisions
- A simple computer might let you set an alarm to wake you up
- But an AI system might scan your emails, work out that you’ve got a meeting tomorrow, and then set an alarm and plan a journey for you
- AI tech is often “trained” – which means it observes something (potentially even a human) then learns about a task over time
- For instance, an AI system can be fed thousands of photos of human faces, then generate photos of human faces all on its own
- Some experts have raised concerns that humans will eventually lose control of super-intelligent AI
- But the tech world is still divided over whether or not AI tech will eventually kill us all in a Terminator-style apocalypse
Most read in Phones & Gadgets
In other news, Nasa has baffled space fans by releasing an image of what appears to be a rainbow on Mars.
A lost Ancient Egyptian city has been uncovered after 3,000 years.
And, a new study claims to finally provide some answers to why a 17th century bishop was buried with a foetus.
What do you make of the Picasso painting discovery? Let us know in the comments…
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk
