Identify a painting from a photo, and see the record behind the answer.
Wondering what painting this is? Photograph the work and, where permitted, its label. Lensmark checks the likely identity, then explains the artist, date and story that the available sources support. If it cannot verify the painting, it says so.
There is a free tier that needs no payment details. Every work you look up stays in one conversation you can come back to.
What painting is this?
Photograph the painting, or only the detail that stopped you. Two hands from a much larger ceiling are enough, because the answer is read out of the image itself, not off a label beside it.
How can a photo name a painting?
By what is inside the frame. Two separately-trained models each read the photo on its own, and a name is verified only when both land on the same work. Where you stand never enters it: a painting travels, so the room cannot vouch for the name.
What if it’s a copy?
A reproduction still names the work. Lensmark identifies what the image shows and tells you which collection records document the work; it will not rule on original against copy, and when the match is likely rather than certain it says so and asks you to confirm.
Who painted it, and when?
The card answers with the record’s own words: the painter, when the ceiling was painted, what the collection record documents and why it matters, each fact holding the source it was read from. When the record hedges, the card carries the hedge instead of flattening it.
Which sources count for art?
The collection record for the work outranks every write-up of it. Research starts at the museum’s own catalogue, then official institutions, then cross-checked reference, so the trail ends at the record instead of at a guess.
A missing signature is the ordinary case
Most paintings are named from the image itself, not from anything written on them. When a signature, a monogram or a wall label does fall inside the shot, the words are read straight off the photo and checked like any other claim; a close, square-on frame beats a wide shot of half the room. A reverse image search matches your photo to lookalike pictures and leaves the reading to you; Lensmark goes on to read the record and puts a source under each fact.
- Who
- Michelangelo
- Where
- Sistine Chapel ceiling
- Painted
- 1508–1512
The fresco is one of the most replicated religious paintings of all time, so the copy in a stairwell is the ordinary way to meet it. The commission began as twelve apostles for the pendentives; the Pope then left the programme to Michelangelo, and the ceiling he planned instead carries nine scenes from Genesis, this fresco the fourth of them.
The story is ours; the price tag is a specialist’s job
Lensmark tells you who painted it, when, what it is made of and what happened to it since, with the source sitting next to each part. Pricing or authenticating a physical object takes a specialist with the piece in front of them, and a photograph cannot stand in for one.
If you came for a valuation, an auction house or a qualified appraiser is the right next stop. Lensmark can still tell you what the piece is and who painted it, and show you the record that says so.
Venue guides put the same checks inside real galleries
The checks do not change when the subject does. Buildings, monuments and the plaques in front of them are covered on how to identify a landmark from a photo, objects in cases on identify a sculpture or museum object, and the guides below take one place at a time, from the gallery floor to the street outside.
painting examples at the Musée d’Orsay
See how the same evidence checks apply inside one museum’s galleries.
explore paintings at the Rijksmuseum
Follow the venue guide from a pictured work to the available collection record.
London landmarks
Churches, statues, monuments and blue plaques, named and researched on the street.