Police rely on radiocarbon dating to identify forged paintings

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya from Pexels. Article by Carolyn Wilke. Nature – March 9, 2022.

Advances in the technique have bolstered its reputation as a tool for investigating faked artwork.

Radiocarbon dating has unmasked two forged paintings in France — probably the first time the technique has been used in a police investigation. The paintings were supposedly impressionist and pointillist works from around the early twentieth century. But a team led by heritage scientist Lucile Beck at the University of Paris-Saclay used radiocarbon levels in the fibres of their canvases to date them to sometime within the past 70 years. […]

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