Leonardo da Vinci may have been a genius, but he was also a hot mess — at least in terms of organizing his works. When he died in 1519, the Renaissance master left behind 7,000 pages of undated drawings, scientific observations and personal journals, more or less jumbled up in a box. So, when his assistant collected da Vinci’s papers, he did his best to collate them into journals, or codices, mostly based on subject matter. Ever since, art historians have used all sorts of techniques to make an accurate timeline of the various documents now held in museums and collections across the world.
A new system developed by a University of Wisconsin–Madison engineer could help in that centuries-long effort.
William Sethares, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW–Madison, and PhD student Elisa Ou are using a camera system and sophisticated algorithms to match the undated drawings and writings to others with established dates. And it’s not just da Vinci’s materials they’re analyzing; the two are also working on a project dating the works of Rembrandt. Further, they believe their system is applicable to any artwork or document on pre-industrial paper.