'The expulsion of the Moriscos': a 'Velázquez' painted with artificial intelligence

Within a decade it will be three centuries since one of those events that change the history of a country.

Since Christmas Eve 1734 and for four days in a row, a fire devastated the Alcázar of Madrid (where the Royal Palace stands today) and some 500 works were lost.

The charred canvases make any painting lover cry: Ribera, Titian, El Greco, Giordano, Raphael, Rubens, Leonardo (probably a copy or workshop work), Tintoretto and, above all,

The Expulsion of the Moors

( 1627) by Velázquez.

His

Meninas

were saved because they were thrown out of a window and other large canvases could be cut with a knife and taken to safety.

Others were burned.

1,308 paintings survived the disaster, according to the estimate of historian Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, who was director of the Prado Museum from 1983 to 1991.

Almost 300 years later, artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo (1970) has used generative artificial intelligence to

reimagine

the lost

Velázquez

.

The result is a video of just over four minutes (

La expulsion de los moriscos

, 2023) whose beginning simulates humidity and burns.

The artist has not started from scratch.

This technology requires data.

The canvas shows Philip III banishing the Moorish population (1609-1614) from all the kingdoms of Spain.

Some 250,000 people left the country.

“This new Spanish fanaticism convincingly reinforced the black legend, since Philip III, against all the rules of good government, expelled an industrious population,” wrote the Hispanist John Elliott (1930-2022).

Is

the first painting—Sánchez Castillo points out—that speaks of “two Spains” and “Islamophobia.”

More information

Fernando Sánchez Castillo, the artist who turned Franco's yacht into an installation

But AI without information is inert.

It demands, first, words.

However, luckily, shortly before its destruction, the historian and artist Antonio Palomino (1655-1726) described the canvas.

“We see King Felipe the Third armed, and with his cane in his hand pointing to a troop of tearful men, women and children, led by some soldiers, and in the distance some cars, and a piece of navy, with some boats. to transport them.

To the right hand of the King is Spain, represented in a majestic matron, sitting at the foot of a building, in her right hand she has a shield and some darts, in her left hand some ears of wheat, armed in the Roman style, and at her feet “There is an inscription [in Latin] on a plinth.”

Words, but another stroke of fortune was needed.

Something similar to a real image with which to “feed” the artificial intelligence.

There was.

In 1988, the Spanish art expert William B. Jordan (1940-2018), while browsing the catalog of the Philips auction house in London, found a black and white illustration of a painting that was identified only as

Portrait of a Gentleman, in bust, with a high ruff

and was attributed to the circle of Justus Sustermans (1597-1681).

A Flemish painter of the second order.

The small canvas (45.5 x 37 cm) had been enlarged by gluing another one to it and the person portrayed was Philip III.

Both the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth) and the Prado, once restored, had no doubts: it was a sketch (the hair, ruff and black suit were quickly executed) by Velázquez for

The

Expulsion

.

The painting was donated in 2016 to the Madrid art gallery by William B. Jordan through the American Friends of the Prado Museum.

28 years had passed since its discovery.

And quite a few more since in 1627 Philip IV ordered a competition between the young Sevillian genius and his jealous rivals at Court to paint a large painting that represented the expulsion of the Moors.

The contenders were Vicente Carducho (1563-1638), Eugenio Cajés (1577-1634), with a Mannerist style, and Angelo Nardi (1584-1660), an artist trained in Italy.

The king created an independent jury with the Dominican Juan Bautista Maíno (1581-1649) and the architect and painter Giovanni Battista Crescenzi (1577-1635).

All artists presented sketches, most likely in oil.

Velázquez won, who showed that he knew how to paint more than “a head,” as his detractors accused him of.

After the victory he was appointed chamber painter by Philip IV.

That's the past.

At present, the tesserae were completing the mosaic.

Sánchez Castillo turned to Palomino's text, to the oil sketch that Velázquez planned to use as a starting point in a 335 x 274 cm canvas, which would hang in the Hall of Mirrors, to artificial intelligence and to the help of Paula García, 25 years, who is preparing, at the Complutense University of Madrid, his thesis on

AI applied to contemporary sculpture

.

The palette of the 21st century mixes time and technology.

They have spent more than one hundred hours to obtain the image that illustrates this article.

80% of the result corresponds to “artistic creation” and “20%” to AI.

“In the face of artificial intelligence there is always natural suspicion,” defends the artist.

AI contributes but also makes mistakes.

They started working with MidJourney, an artificial intelligence system that transforms words into images and that works, for example, through the Discord platform.

The communication system, that is, the

voice

that

asks,

is called

a prompt

.

An instruction—in the form of text or image, that is provided to an AI-based language model—in order to generate coherent responses.

“The greater the precision in the

prompt

, the better it works.

If you write generic ideas referring, in this case, to our painting, such as 'allegory of Spain', Spanish flags will appear on the screen.

It is a job that requires a lot of time, patience, going forward, returning, consulting images on the internet, returning;

move forward,” assumes Paula García, a graduate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University and specialized in video game design.

“The most complex elements have been the steps, the curtains, the hands (one his and the other of the artist) of Philip III and above all the architecture,” she comments.

Once recreated, the images had to fit together.

They used the latest version of the Adobe Photoshop program because it incorporates artificial intelligence.

The option is called “generative filling” and allows different images to be joined together without seeing the

seams

.

The advantage of using this technology is summarized with another image: “It is like having an Army of interns.”

The Ministry of Culture has placed limits on the “technological landing”.

It has committed not to award or hire works created entirely with AI.

Maybe it's a matter of percentages.

Tefaf—the world's most important ancient art fair, held in Maastricht—prohibits exhibiting pieces with more than 30% restoration.

An interesting paradox.

The Salvator Mundi

(attributed to the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, with the participation of the Renaissance genius) could never have been sold there

for 450 million dollars.

A question of intelligence, but not artificial.

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