[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/1364px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA group of scientists at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes have published a study introducing a newly developed method that they say will help authenticate artworks\u2014and identify potential forgeries. The report was published in the June 2026 issue of Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties<\/em>, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on cross-disciplinary research involving physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering research.<\/p>\n \n\tThe research, conducted by Francois Berkmans,\u00a0Ludovic Nys,\u00a0and\u00a0Maxence Bigerelle, focuses on how surface metrology\u2014essentially, the texture and topography of a painting\u2019s brushstrokes\u2014can be used like a fingerprint to zero in on the authorship of a particular artwork. Surface metrology, Berkmans explained to Artnet<\/em>News<\/em>, \u201chas historically been developed mainly for industrial applications and mechanical engineering\u201d and has not typically be applied in an art authentication context.<\/p>\n \n\tBerkmans and his co-authors are hoping to change that. Their study used artworks by Vincent van Gogh to demonstrate how this noninvasive technique can compare fractal dimensions via very high-resolution scans of the objects\u2019 surfaces. Anyone with a good enough eye can see how artists handle paint or deploy brushstrokes differently, but the kinds of variation detected by Berkmans\u2019s approach would not be noticeable with the naked eye.<\/p>\n \n\tThe team of researchers analyzed scans of nine van Gogh paintings and used surface data to evaluate two debated artworks: one a known fake (which the method identified as a \u201cstrong outlier\u201d) and the other a newly authenticated artwork titled Sunset at Montmajour<\/em>, which was confirmed to be an authentic van Gogh in 2013 by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n \n\tBerkmans told the science website Phys.org<\/em> that he doesn\u2019t expect this type of analysis to replace traditional connoisseurship; rather this new technique \u201cgives us a measurable fingerprint of an artist\u2019s brushwork without needing to sample or disturb the painting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/french-scientists-new-technology-identify-forged-artwork-authenticate-1234788976\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/1364px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?w=1024″] A group of scientists at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes have published a study introducing a newly developed method that they say will help authenticate artworks\u2014and identify potential forgeries. The report was published in the June 2026 issue of Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1986409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}