Basic Info

• Professor: Rick Johnson (email to johnson at ece.cornell.edu)
  -Office: 390 Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall (phone: 255-0429)
  -Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:15-2:30 pm, Wednesdays 10:15-11:30 pm, and other times by appointment


• Class meeting time: Mondays 8:40 - 9:55 am and Wednesdays 8:40 - 9:55 am


• Classroom: 219 Phillips Hall


• Catalog Description: Prerequisite: ECE 220 and Math 294; recommended: ECE 325. 3 credits. The analysis of fine art paintings by art historians and conservation specialists involves the close examination of various images (e.g. visible light, x-ray) of the painting. This course will focus on the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and highlight case studies of recent technical examinations. The signal processing tasks encountered will be extracted and rudimentary solutions proposed based on fundamental signal processing techniques. Students will assess and improve these "starter" schemes, performing (a) periodicity extraction (e.g. for canvas thread counting), (b) set membership discrimination (e.g. for artist identification), and (c) multiple image alignment (e.g. for x-ray stitching). In this emerging application for signal processing, several of these tasks have no widely adopted computer-assisted schemes. Matlab will be used for implementation of the algorithms on high resolution image data provided by the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

Tentative Lecture Schedule

• 9/1 and 3: Paintings of Vincent van Gogh


• 9/8 and 10: Van Gogh case studies: thread count


• 9/15 and 17: Two-dimensional linear filtering


• 9/22 and 24: Two-dimensional transforms


• 9/29 and 10/1: Two-dimensional nonlinear filtering


• 10/6, 8, and 15: Canvas support technical examination


• 10/27 and 29: Student presentations of semi-automatic thread counters


• 11/3 and 5: Van Gogh case studies: authentication


• 11/10 and 12: Set membership discrimination


• 11/17 and 19: Connoisseurship and fakery


• 11/24 and 26: Painting technical examination methods using images


• 12/1 and 3: Student presentations of dating classifiers

Reading Material

• Van Gogh's Decade as an Artist
  • L. van Tilborgh and E. van Uitert, ``A Ten-Year Career, The Oeuvre of Vincent van Gogh'' and ``Chronology of Life and Work'' in Vincent van Gogh: Paintings, E. van Uitert, L. van Tilborgh, and S. van Heugten, eds., pp. 15-32, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1990.
  • A. Dumas, "The Van Gogh Literature from 1990 to the Present: A Selective Review," The Van Gogh Museum Journal, pp. 41-51, 2002.
• Weave Density Case Study
  • K. H. Lister, C. Peres, I. Fiedler, "Tracing an Interaction: Supporting Evidence, Experimental Grounds" in Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, ed. D. W. Druick and P. K. Zegers, pp. 354-369, Thames and Hudson, 2001.
• Canvas Support Technical Examination
  • A. Kirsh and R. S. Levenson, Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies, pp. 39-52 ("Technical Examination of Fabric Supports" and case studies 5-7), Yale University Press, 2000.
  • E. van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, chapter 5 ("The Canvas Support"), pp. 90-130, University of California Press, 2000.
• Authentication Case Studies
  • E. Hendriks and L. van Tilborgh, "Van Gogh's `Garden of the Asylum': Genuine or Fake?", The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXLIII, pp. 145-156, March 2001.
  • L. van Tilborgh and E. Hendriks, "The Tokyo `Sunflowers': A Genuine Repitition by Van Gogh or a Schuffenecker Forgery?," The Van Gogh Museum Journal, pp. 17-43, 2001.
• Connoisseurship and Fakery
  • C. B. Scallen, Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship, chapter 2 ("Wilhelm Bodes's and Giovanni Morelli's Debates About Connoisseurship"), pp. 89-102, Amsterdam University Press, 2004.
  • S. Koldehoff, "When Myth Seems Stronger than Scholarship: Van Gogh and the Problem of Authenticity," The Van Gogh Museum Journal, pp. 9-25, 2002.
  • S. Koldehoff, "The Wacker Forgeries: A Catalogue," The Van Gogh Museum Journal, pp. 139-149, 2002.
  • W. Feilchenfeldt, ``Van Gogh Fakes: The Wacker Affair, with an illustrated catalogue of the forgeries,'' Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 289-316, 1989, also in W. Feilchenfeldt, By Appointment Only: Cézanne, Van Gogh and Some Secrets of Art Dealing, pp. 81-105, Thames and Hudson, 2005.
• Computer-Assisted Artist Identification
  • C. R. Johnson, Jr., E. Hendriks, I. Berezhnoy, E. Brevdo, S. Hughes, I. Daubechies, J. Li, E. Postma, and J. Z. Wang, , "Image Processing for Artist Identification: Computerized Analysis of Vincent van Gogh's Painting Brushstrokes," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (special issue on Visual Cultural Heritage), vol. 25, July 2008.
• Painting Technical Examination Methods and Images
  • A. Kirsh and R. S. Levenson, Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies, pp. 72-78 ("Examination of Grounds" and case study 11), pp. 121-126 ("Paint Handling"), pp. 177-213 ("Nondestructive Examination of the Paint Layer" and case studies 19-24), and pp. 220-223 ("Examination of the Varnish Layer with Natural Light", "Examination of the Varnish Layer with Ultraviolet Light", and case study 25), Yale University Press, 2000.
  • C. Hassall, "Paintings" in Radiography of Cultural Material, J. Lang and A. Middleton, eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 98-116, 1997.
  • C. Garrido, "Genius at Work: Velázquez's Materials and Technique" in J. Brown and C. Garrido, Velázquez: The Technique of Genius, pp. 15-20, Yale University Press, 1998.
  • H. von Sonnenburg, Rembrandt / Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, Vol. 1, Paintings: Problems and Issues, pp. 10-37 ("Methods of Examination: A Brief Historical Survey of Scientific Techniques") and pp. 38-55 ("The Range of Rembrandt's Individual Style: Consistencies and Inconsistencies"), 1995.
  • K. Groen and E. Hendriks, "Frans Hals: A Technical Examination" in Frans Hals, ed. S. Slive, pp. 109-123, Royal Academy of Arts, 1989.
  • H. Lie, "Digital Imaging for the Study of Paintings: Experiences at the Straus Center for Conservation" in Recent Developments in the Technical Examination of Early Netherlandish Painting: Methodology, Limitations and Perspectives, ed. M. Faries and R. Spronk, pp. 117-134, Brepols, 2003.
• Underpainting Revelation Case Studies
  • M. Chavannes and L. van Tilborgh, "A Missing Van Gogh Unveiled," The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXLIX, pp. 546-550, August 2007.
  • D. Bomford, A. Roy, and A. Rüger, "Catalogue entry 9: Self Portrait at the Age of 34, 1640" in Art in the Making: Rembrandt, D. Bomford, J. Kirby, A. Roy, A. Rüger, and R. White, ed., pp. 118-125, Yale University Press, 2006.
  • E. Buijsen, P. Schatborn, B. Broos, "Catologue entries 14a (Self Portrait with Gorget) and 14b (Portrait of Rembrandt with Gorget)" in Rembrandt by Himself, C. White and Q. Buvelot, ed., pp. 112-117, National Gallery Publications, 1999.