Pearls and beads in Jan van Eyck’s paintings
 
Pearls and beads in Jan van Eyck’s paintings ■
 
Ljiljana Platisa, Ljiljana Platisa, Ljiljana Platisa, Bruno Cornelis, Bruno Cornelis, Bruno Cornelis, Tijana Ruzic, Tijana Ruzic, Tijana Ruzic, Alexandra Pizurica, Alexandra Pizurica, Alexandra Pizurica, Ann Dooms, Ann Dooms, Ann Dooms, Maximiliaan Martens, Maximiliaan Martens, Maximiliaan Martens, Marc De Mey, Marc De Mey, Marc De Mey, , ,
 
Abstract ■

Objective characterization of jewels in paintings, especially pearls, has been a long lasting challenge for art historians. The way an artist painted pearls reflects his ability to observing nature and his knowledge of contemporary optical theory. Moreover, the painterly execution may also be considered as an individual characteristic useful in distinguishing hands. In this work, we propose a set of image analysis techniques to analyze and measure spatial characteristics of the digital images of pearls, all relying on the so called spatiogram image representation. Our experimental results demonstrate good correlation between the new metrics and the visually observed image features.