Free Republic

Scholars have in fact long debated whether or not the painting is a Raphael original... a new method of analysis based on an AI algorithm has sided with those who think at least some of the strokes were at the hand of another artist.Researchers from the UK and US developed a custom analysis algorithm based on the works that we know are the result of the Italian master's brushwork...Machine learning processes typically need to be trained on a vast pool of examples, something which isn't always available when it comes to a sole artist's life work. In this case, the...

Italian Portraiture, including Raphael, to Early Venetian Lute Music Art sleuths have created a 3D reconstruction of the face of Italian painter Raphael, solving an age-old mystery over his final resting place, Rome's Tor Vergata University said. The artist, a child prodigy and part of a trinity of Renaissance greats along with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, died in 1520, aged only 37. A red rose graces his tomb in Rome's Pantheon all year round. His body was exhumed in the 19th century, at which point a plaster cast of his skull was made. But experts were not sure the...

The WH and Congress have severely overestimated the charm of President Obama. They believe that when the President speaks the public all feel a tingle running up their legs... The public is smarter than for which the bureaucrats in Washington give them credit… In the old days, when Americans took civics, and took civic life seriously, every schoolboy/schoolgirl knew what a yellow dog was. The phrase, which almost certainly came from Alabama more than three-quarters of a century ago, grew out of the notion that some Southerners would (gladly) vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Top Senate Democrats floated the names of potential candidates for the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a meeting with President Bush, describing them as the type of nominee who could avoid a fierce confirmation battle. Several officials familiar with the discussion said Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Ed Prado of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, both of whom are Hispanic, were among the names mentioned as Bush met with key lawmakers from both parties to discuss the first high court vacancy in 11 years. The officials spoke on condition...