Scientists in France have introduced a new way to examine paintings that could sharpen the field of art authentication without touching the work itself.
Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes published a study in the June 2026 issue of Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties describing a noninvasive method that uses surface metrology to help identify artworks and detect possible forgeries. The technique looks closely at the texture and topography of a painting’s surface, treating brushwork as a measurable signature rather than a purely visual clue.
The study was led by Francois Berkmans, Ludovic Nys, and Maxence Bigerelle. In their paper, the team used high-resolution scans of nine Vincent van Gogh paintings to test whether the method could distinguish between authentic works and disputed ones. They then applied the analysis to two debated paintings: one known fake, which the method flagged as a “strong outlier,” and Sunset at Montmajour, the work authenticated in 2013 by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The researchers’ goal is not to replace traditional connoisseurship, but to give it another layer of evidence. Berkmans has said the method offers “a measurable fingerprint of an artist’s brushwork without needing to sample or disturb the painting.” That distinction matters in a field where attribution often depends on a combination of technical analysis, provenance research, and expert judgment.
Van Gogh is a particularly revealing test case. His paintings are among the most studied in the canon, and yet questions of authorship still arise around works that circulate outside settled museum collections. A method that can detect subtle surface variation invisible to the naked eye may prove useful not only for Van Gogh scholarship, but for broader authentication work across the market and museum world.
For now, the study suggests that the surface of a painting may hold more information than the eye alone can register — and that the future of attribution may depend as much on measurement as on connoisseurship.
