
AI has helped recreate an artwork that had been hidden under a Pablo Picasso painting for nearly 120 years.
The mysterious landscape lurks beneath the visible surface of Picassoās La MisĆ©reuse Accroupie (The Crouching Beggar), a portrayal of a destitute woman.

In 2018, researchers used an X-ray fluorescence imagining instrument to reveal a faint image of the covered scene.
Art historians suspect itās a painting of a park near Barcelona by Santiago RusiƱol, a friend of Picassoās and leader of the Catalan modernism movement. They believe Picasso traced the hills on the landscape to shape the contours of the crouching womanās back.
[Read: New AI technique transforms any image into the style of famous artists]
The X-ray imaging had uncovered a murky shadow of the painting. AI has been used to reconstruct the image in detail and color.
Resurrecting buried art
The recreation was made by Oxia Palus, an art collective that uses AI to uncover lost masterpieces.
The Oxia Palus team used a combination of spectroscopic imaging, AI, and 3D printing to actualize the visible trace of the landscape. They call the method āthe neomastic process.ā
They then used a 3D height map to layer paint onto the canvas in a way in the style of RusiƱol. They say the approach integrates the depth, thickness, approximate length of the artistās brushstrokes into the recreation.
Oxia Palusā co-founder, George Cann, says the process can shed light on hidden artworks:
As we use more AI to accelerate the identification and reconstruction of critically important lost art, we will have a highly significant impact on enabling a better understanding of the interwoven history of art and society.
Oxia Palus is now selling 100 of the canvases, with the inevitable accompaniment of an NFT.
We canāt know how closely the reinterpretation matches RusiƱolās original, but the technique could be an interesting tool for art historians.
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