Investigation of craquelure patterns in oil paintings using precise 3D morphological analysis for art authentication

PLoS One. 2022 Jul 28;17(7):e0272078. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272078. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

The development of scientific technology for art authentication has elicited multidimensional evidence to distinguish forgeries from original artwork. Here, we analyzed the three-dimensional morphology of cracks that contain information, such as the painting features of artworks, using optical coherence tomography. The forgeries were produced by an expert from original oil paintings with cracks that occur owing to paint drying, canvas aging, and physical damage. Parameters, such as shape, width, and depth, were compared based on the cross-sectional images of the original and fake cracks. The original cracks were rectangular and inverted, but the fake cracks were relatively simple inverted triangles. The original cracks were as deep as the thickness of the upper layer and mostly were "thin/deep" or "wide/shallow". The fake cracks were observed to be "'thin/shallow" or "wide/deep". This study aims to improve the understanding of crack characteristics and promote the development of techniques for determining art authenticity.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Paint
  • Paintings*
  • Tomography, Optical Coherence

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1A2C400273212, 2021R1A4A200182) and Korea Medical Device Development Fund (KMDF_PR_20200901_0103). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.