Similarity Learning for Art Analysis

On the occasion of the Reformation's anniversary in 2017, a joint project of the FAU, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (GNM) in Nuremberg and the Technology Arts Sciences (TH Köln) was initiated. Goal of the interdisciplinary project covering art history, art technology, reformation history and computer science is the creation of a critical catalog of Luther portraits (1519-1530).

Martin Luther is known as media star of 16-th century who has often been portrayed. So far unlike his works, however, the variety of contemporary portraits (painting and prints) is neither completely collected nor critically analyzed.

In the subproject of computer science, algorithms will be developed for cross-genre and multi-modality registration of portraits to overlay digitized paintings and prints as well as paintings acquired with different imaging systems such as visible light photography and infrared reflectography. Then, methods will be developed to objectively analyze the portraits according to their similarity.

The analysis of similarities shall allow us to draw conclusions concerning serial production processes and lead to a temporal and contextual classification of the artworks.