{"id":238793,"date":"2026-06-12T03:19:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/new-art-test-could-help-museums-spot-fake-van-goghs-without-touching-paintings"},"modified":"2026-06-12T03:19:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:19:49","slug":"new-art-test-could-help-museums-spot-fake-van-goghs-without-touching-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/new-art-test-could-help-museums-spot-fake-van-goghs-without-touching-paintings","title":{"rendered":"New art test could help museums spot fake Van Goghs without touching paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-art-test-could-help-museums-spot-fake-van-goghs-without-touching-paintings.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal <i>Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties<\/i> introduces a pioneering, noninvasive technique that can distinguish authentic artworks from forgeries, offering museums, collectors, and auction houses a major advantage in tackling art fraud.<\/p>\n<p>The study, developed at the Universit\u00e9 Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, introduces a method that analyzes the microscopic \u201ctexture\u201d of a painting by converting high-resolution images into 3D-like maps, allowing researchers to measure how rough or detailed the surface is using fractal dimensions. This measurement captures subtle patterns created by an artist\u2019s brushwork\u2014patterns so consistent that they act like a morphological signature unique to that artist.<\/p>\n<p>Using works attributed to Vincent van Gogh, the researchers showed that the method can reliably distinguish between authentic paintings and known forgeries. In tests, the well-documented fake \u201cThe Plowmen\u201d was identified as a strong outlier, while the recently authenticated \u201cSunset at Montmajour\u201d aligned closely with Van Gogh\u2019s known works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties introduces a pioneering, noninvasive technique that can distinguish authentic artworks from forgeries, offering museums, collectors, and auction houses a major advantage in tackling art fraud. The study, developed at the Universit\u00e9 Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, introduces a method that analyzes the microscopic \u201ctexture\u201d of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,15,1965,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-habitats","category-mapping","category-media-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}