CHArt Eighteenth Annual Conference

Antonio Criminisi, Microsoft Corporation, USA
Martin Kemp Dept. History of Art, University of Oxford, UK
Andrew Zisserman Dept. Engineering Science, University of Oxford, UK
Bringing Pictorial Space to Life: Computer Techniques for the Analysis of Paintings

This paper explores the use of computer graphics and computer vision techniques in the history of art. The focus is on analysing the geometry of perspective paintings to learn about the perspectival skills of artists and explore the evolution of linear perspective in history.

Algorithms for a systematic analysis of the two- and three-dimensional geometry of paintings are drawn from the work on "single-view reconstruction" and applied to interpreting works of art from the Italian Renaissance and later periods.

Since a perspectival painting is not a photograph of an actual subject but an artificial construction subject to imaginative manipulation and inadvertent inaccuracies, the internal consistency of its geometry must be assessed before carrying out any geometric analysis. Some simple techniques to analyse the consistency and perspectival accuracy of the geometry of a painting are discussed.

Moreover, this work presents new algorithms for generating new views of a painted scene or portions of it, analysing shapes and proportions of objects, filling in occluded areas, performing a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of a painting and a rigorous analysis of possible recon-struction ambiguities.

The validity of the techniques described here is demonstrated on a number of historical paintings and frescoes. Whenever possible, the computer-generated results are compared to those obtained by art historians through careful manual analysis.

This research represents a further attempt to build a constructive dialogue between two very different disciplines: computer science and history of art. Despite their fundamental differences, science and art can learn and be enriched by each other's procedures.

A. Criminisi. Accurate Visual Metrology from Single and Multiple Uncalibrated Images. Distinguished Dissertation Series. Springer-Verlag London Ltd., July 2001. ISBN: 1852334681.

A. Criminisi. The Virtual Trinity. Workshop on Art, Science and Techniques of Drafting in the Renaissance. Florence, Italy, May 2001.

A. Criminisi, M. Kemp, and A. Zisserman. Bringing Pictorial Space to Life: Computer Techniques for the Analysis of paintings. Microsoft Research Technical Report, MSR-TR-2002-64, 2002.

O. D. Faugeras. Three-Dimensional Computer Vision: a Geometric Viewpoint. MIT Press, 1993.

J. V. Field. The Invention of Infinity, mathematics and arts in the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 1997.

D. Hockney. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Viking Press, October 2001.

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