“The centuries can leave their mark on oil paintings as wear and tear and natural ageing produce cracks, discoloration and patches where pieces of pigment have flaked off.

Repairing the damage can take conservators years, so the effort is reserved for the most valuable works, but a fresh approach promises to transform the process by restoring aged artworks in hours.

The technique draws on artificial intelligence and other computer tools to create a digital reconstruction of the damaged painting. This is then printed on to a transparent polymer sheet that is carefully laid over the work.

To demonstrate the technique, Alex Kachkine, a graduate researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, restored a damaged oil-on-panel work attributed to the Master of the Prado Adoration, a Dutch painter whose name has been lost, as a late 15th-century painting after Martin Schongauer…

In an accompanying article, Prof Hartmut Kutzke at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, said the approach provided a way to restore damaged paintings faster and more cheaply than was possible with conventional techniques. ‘The method is likely to be most applicable to paintings of relatively low value that would otherwise be housed behind closed doors, and might not be suitable for famous, valuable artworks,’ he said. ‘However, it could widen public access to art, bringing damaged paintings out of storage and in front of a new audience.'”

From The Guardian.