Charting the history of Western art with math

Abstract

For more than a century, researchers have used statistics to study writing style in a sort of literary forensics technique called stylometry. In 1901, physicist T. C. Mendenhall famously measured word-length frequency in William Shakespeare’s works and reported that the writer’s style was awfully close to that of fellow writer Christopher Marlowe, fueling rumors that the latter may have written works attributed to the former. The techniques are still in use: In 2013, stylometric software unmasked “Robert Galbraith,” author of the acclaimed crime fiction novel The Cuckoo’s Calling , as J. K. Rowling, who penned the Harry Potter books. St. John the Evangelist Drinking from the Poisoned Cup portrays episodes from the life of the saint. Painted by medieval Italian painter Taddeo Gaddi, it dates between 1348 and 1353. Using St. John the Evangelist Drinking from the Poisoned Cup as a case study, the graphic depicts brightness surfaces, as calculated by the researchers. The brightness of each point is considered as its height. Reprinted from ref. 4, with permission. Stylometry reaches other arts, too. Computer scientists have unleashed algorithms on paintings, charting mathematical patterns in the artwork of masters like Jackson Pollack, Vincent van Gogh, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and others (1⇓–3 …