Hierarchical classification of paintings using face- and brush stroke models

It is often difficult to attribute works of art to a certain artist. In the case of paintings, radiological methods like X-ray and infra-red diagnosis, digital radiography, computer-tomography, etc. and color analyzes are employed to authenticate works of art. But all these methods do not relate certain characteristics of an art work to a specific artist-the artist's personal style. In order to study this personal style, we examine the "structural signature" based on brush strokes in particular in portrait miniatures. A computer-aided classification and recognition system for portrait miniatures is developed, which enables a semi-automatic classification based on brush strokes. A hierarchically structured classification scheme is introduced which separates the classification into three different levels of information: color, shape of region, and structure of brush strokes.