Removing overpaint revealed many losses that will be carefully
inpainted by the conservators, using stable and reversible materials,
to restore the visual coherence of the original image. In contrast to
losses and abrasions, age cracks are not inpainted in actual conservation
unless they severely interfere with the painted form. For this reason,
the cracks are not inpainted intentionally in this experiment
(unless they are inside a larger loss and assigned, therefore, to a missing
region). Here we provide a virtual inpainting simulation of some
parts obtained with the patch-based algorithm of [25] [see Figure 5
and the enlarged part in Figure 6(a)]. We have chosen to inpaint several
figurative parts that contain structure and texture. The results
show how challenging this problem is even for state-of-the-art
inpainting methods. None of the methods tested so far produced a
satisfying result that fully (albeit virtually) restored the painted form.
Experienced conservators master a knowledge of the physical characteristics
of the paint layers and of the painted forms that call upon
complex visual perception and interpretation skills. Virtual inpaintings
do not provide alternatives to their work on the original but test
the potential of the methods that need to be further developed.