The research was prompted by the so-called replication crisis in the biomedical and social sciences around 2010. It showed that many studies did not produce the same results when repeated. “This raised the question of whether similar problems also occur in the humanities, where expert judgement plays a central role,” says Rulkens.
Rembrandt & Rubens
Rulkens, who specialises in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, applied replication to art history. “When it comes to attributing a painting, in other words, judging whether an artist actually made the work, it is not always clear how experts arrive at that conclusion. I therefore wanted to investigate whether this method could add value to the assessment of well-known paintings.”
Rulkens put this to the test by examining paintings associated with Rembrandt van Rijn (Mauritshuis, The Hague, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg) and the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (KMSKA, Antwerp). To do so, she developed a new method: the Attribution Expert Consensus Meeting (A-ECM), in which experts assess a work of art together in a fixed and transparent way. The approach reduces mutual influence and makes clear where scholars agree or disagree.
In the Rubens case study, experts reached consensus that the altarpiece Enthroned Madonna was partly painted by Rubens, and indicated that they were on average 93.8 per cent certain of that judgement. At the same time, the study showed that there is still room for nuance at the level of detail: the experts did not reach full consensus on specific parts of the work. According to Rulkens, this is precisely what makes the method so valuable: it not only reveals agreement, but also documents doubt and differences in interpretation more clearly.
Open Science
“These replication studies show that the humanities, too, have much to gain from repeating research,” says art historian Rulkens. “It makes expert assessments more transparent and increases confidence in art-historical attributions.” In that sense, the research also aligns with the broader movement towards Open Science, in which research is made more transparent, more verifiable and easier to follow.
“My research shows not only what experts conclude, but also how they arrive at that judgement and how certain they are of it. That transparent interplay of perspectives is essential if we are to test, discuss and pass on knowledge about attributions and artists’ oeuvres to future generations of experts.”
Rulkens will defend her dissertation, Rembrandt and Rubens Revisited: Towards more Transparent and Replicable Attributions, on Friday 24 April. More information can be found here.
Photo: Rik Klein Gotink.