Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ugail, Hassan, Ritch-Frel, Jan, Matuzava, Irina
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11627
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917207360929792
author Ugail, Hassan
Ritch-Frel, Jan
Matuzava, Irina
author_facet Ugail, Hassan
Ritch-Frel, Jan
Matuzava, Irina
contents Authentication and attribution of works on paper remain persistent challenges in cultural heritage, particularly when the available reference corpus is small and stylistic cues are primarily expressed through line and limited tonal variation. We present a verification-based computational framework for historical drawing authentication using one-class autoencoders trained on a compact set of interpretable handcrafted features. Ten artist-specific verifiers are trained using authenticated sketches from the Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection, the Ashmolean Collections Catalogue, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Royal Collection Trust (UK), the Victoria and Albert Museum Collections, and an online catalogue of the Casa Buonarroti collection and evaluated under a biometric-style protocol with genuine and impostor trials. Feature vectors comprise Fourier-domain energy, Shannon entropy, global contrast, GLCM-based homogeneity, and a box-counting estimate of fractal complexity. Across 900 verification decisions (90 genuine and 810 impostor trials), the pooled system achieves a True Acceptance Rate of 83.3% with a False Acceptance Rate of 9.5% at the chosen operating point. Performance varies substantially by artist, with near-zero false acceptance for some verifiers and elevated confusability for others. A pairwise attribution of false accepts indicates structured error pathways consistent with stylistic proximity and shared drawing conventions, whilst also motivating tighter control of digitisation artefacts and threshold calibration. The proposed methodology is designed to complement, rather than replace, connoisseurship by providing reproducible, quantitative evidence suitable for data-scarce settings common in historical sketch attribution.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_11627
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Handcrafted Feature-Assisted One-Class Learning for Artist Authentication in Historical Drawings
Ugail, Hassan
Ritch-Frel, Jan
Matuzava, Irina
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Authentication and attribution of works on paper remain persistent challenges in cultural heritage, particularly when the available reference corpus is small and stylistic cues are primarily expressed through line and limited tonal variation. We present a verification-based computational framework for historical drawing authentication using one-class autoencoders trained on a compact set of interpretable handcrafted features. Ten artist-specific verifiers are trained using authenticated sketches from the Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection, the Ashmolean Collections Catalogue, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Royal Collection Trust (UK), the Victoria and Albert Museum Collections, and an online catalogue of the Casa Buonarroti collection and evaluated under a biometric-style protocol with genuine and impostor trials. Feature vectors comprise Fourier-domain energy, Shannon entropy, global contrast, GLCM-based homogeneity, and a box-counting estimate of fractal complexity. Across 900 verification decisions (90 genuine and 810 impostor trials), the pooled system achieves a True Acceptance Rate of 83.3% with a False Acceptance Rate of 9.5% at the chosen operating point. Performance varies substantially by artist, with near-zero false acceptance for some verifiers and elevated confusability for others. A pairwise attribution of false accepts indicates structured error pathways consistent with stylistic proximity and shared drawing conventions, whilst also motivating tighter control of digitisation artefacts and threshold calibration. The proposed methodology is designed to complement, rather than replace, connoisseurship by providing reproducible, quantitative evidence suitable for data-scarce settings common in historical sketch attribution.
title Handcrafted Feature-Assisted One-Class Learning for Artist Authentication in Historical Drawings
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11627