AI Unravels the Mystery Surrounding Raphael's 'Madonna with the Rose'

The mystery surrounding Raphael's renowned masterpiece, "Madonna with the Rose," may have been successfully deciphered with the help of an artificial intelligence algorithm developed at the University of Bradford, as reported by The Guardian.

The painting, "Madonna with the Rose" (Madonna della Rosa), depicting Mary, Joseph, and the young Jesus with John the Baptist, is currently housed in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Long believed to be Raphael's work, doubts emerged in the 19th century.

Some art experts argued that Joseph's figure seemed like a "belated thought" and could not have been painted by Raphael. Others believed that someone else might have painted the lower part with the rose. In Spain, this painting has always been attributed entirely to Raphael.

The artwork has now been analysed by artificial intelligence, developed by Hassan Ugail, a professor of visual computing at the University of Bradford.

The conclusion is that Raphael likely painted the majority of the canvas, but Joseph's face was created by another hand. The lower part, presumably, was executed by Raphael himself.

"The analysis by the artificial intelligence program showed that the figures of Madonna, Jesus, and Saint John the Baptist unequivocally belong to Raphael. However, the figure of Saint Joseph does not; it was painted by someone else," said Howell Edwards, honorary professor of molecular spectroscopy at Bradford and co-author of the study.

The algorithm is based on a detailed analysis of 49 works by the artist. As a result, the artificial intelligence can recognize the similarity to authentic Raphael works with 98% accuracy, according to Ugail.

"The AI examines the painting very meticulously. It scrutinizes not only the faces but also all its parts, studies the colour palette, shades, tonal values, and brushstrokes. The analysis is conducted almost microscopically, considering all the key features of Raphael's craftsmanship," noted the developer of the algorithm, Hassan Ugail.

Raffaello Sanzio was an Italian painter, draftsman, and architect of the Umbrian school and later the Roman school. He is one of the most prominent artists of the High Renaissance and one of the wealthiest and most famous painters in Italy. In his works, Raphael embodied the ideals of Renaissance humanism.

The Gaze previously reported the discovery of a lost artefact from the Italian city of Pompeii in a suburban house in Belgium, where it had lain for half a century. The marble bas-relief from the time of the city's destruction by volcanic eruption had adorned a wall near the stairs leading to the basement all this time.