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‘New Rembrandt’ to be unveiled in Amsterdam | Art and design | The Guardian

If people think the portrait of a 17th-century thirtysomething man in black hat and white collar looks unmistakably like a Rembrandt, then Bas Korsten will be a happy man. The painting’s true creators are, however, data analysts and computers.

On Tuesday in Amsterdam, an artwork called “the Next Rembrandt” will be unveiled for the first time. It is the result of an 18-month project which asks whether new technology and data can bring back to life one of the greatest, most innovative painters of all time.

The final 3D printed painting consists of more than 148 million pixels and is based on 168,263 Rembrandt painting fragments. Some of the challenges have been in designing a software system that could understand Rembrandt based on his use of geometry, composition and painting materials. A facial recognition algorithm was then used to identify and classify the most typical geometric patterns used to paint human features.