AI was used to restore a lost Velazquez painting – Kommersant

Spanish restoration artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo used artificial intelligence to restore one of Diego Velázquez’s most seminal paintings, The Expulsion of the Moriscos. This is reported by the Madrid El Pais.

The painting, painted in 1627, depicts one of the dramatic events in Spanish history, which a contemporary of the events, the French Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, called “the most barbaric event in history.” In 1609, King Philip III ordered the expulsion from the country of 300 thousand Muslims living there who had converted to Catholicism, the Moriscos. The Moriscos, under constant threat from the Ottoman Empire, were considered a kind of “fifth column” of the Turks in the country.

The theme of the victory of power over possible traitors was so important that the next king, Philip IV, organized a competition among court artists, proposing the expulsion of the Moriscos as a theme for painting. The king was delighted with Velazquez’s work, which became one of his most favorite paintings. As for the artist himself, after winning the competition he received the status of the main court artist and became a close friend of the king himself.

The painting, along with hundreds of other works of art, was lost in the fire that destroyed the royal Alcazar palace in 1734.

Mr. Castillo said he was completely “obsessed” with the painting, which showed Spain as “the defender of Christianity against Islam.” To restore the painting, the artist used the surviving sketch and the surviving detailed descriptions of contemporaries who saw the painting, which were processed by artificial intelligence.

The artist worked with colleague Paula Garcia, who is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on how AI can be used in modern sculpture.

Andrey Kelekeev