AI Fails to Identify Unknown 17th-Century Portrait, Human Detective Work Prevails

In a connoisseurship course at the Royal Academy, art historian Bendor Grosvenor presented students with a previously unknown mid-17th-century portrait of Dorothy Hobart, auctioned as "Circle of Peter Lely." Grosvenor suspected John Michael Wright, a London-born artist (1617). Students' phones and AI tools like Google Lens and Claude failed to suggest Wright, with Claude hallucinating a recommendation to ask Grosvenor. The class then employed traditional methods: visiting the National Portrait Gallery and its Heinz Archive, comparing candidates Lely, Mary Beale, and Gerard Soest. A student found a Wright portrait with similar pose and background, confirming the attribution. Dutch art historian Carla van de Puttelaar, preparing a Wright monograph, agreed. Grosvenor and Van de Puttelaar advocate for a Wright exhibition, the first since 1982 at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The article also humorously notes Grosvenor's plan B as an art handler if AI takes over, and critiques the high cost of art transport that threatens loan exhibitions.