Protect Your Peerless Artwork with Innovative Nanoengineered Technology

The art market has always had to deal with an endemic problem: counterfeiting. All art is historically at risk of being copied and sold fraudulently by counterfeiters. A report by the Swiss Fine Art Expert Institute estimates that over half of all the artwork in circulation is fake.

All this creates an incalculable loss of value for the entire market, including artists, auction houses, insurance companies and of course the end buyers, who often find themselves spending considerable sums of money only to end up with worthless pieces or even get into legal trouble. Works of art are generally not protected with dedicated security devices that uniquely identify the work itself.

The problem historically originates from the requirement not to visibly alter the artwork itself and from the relative lack of security of existing non-invasive solutions.Our team at Politecnico di Milano aims to develop a printable new anti-counterfeiting system (PYPAINT) based on carbon-based nanostructures with a specific optoelectronic response, which makes it possible to create an artwork's unique identifier code that is invisible to the human eye.

Thanks to the invisibility of inks, it is possible to print them directly on the artwork, or on a transparent label.

The inks will be printed through an inkjet printer forming a pattern of spots able to create almost infinite codes readable using a special optical reader. Without the need for heavy metals or toxic compounds, PYPAINT is environmental-friendly.

The verification of PYPAINT allows access to a remote database to guarantee not only its authenticity but also its history and relationship with the rest of the artist's works, creating a true digital reliable medium, available to the owner.

It only takes a few seconds to identify and retrieve all the information of interest through a multi-level security protocol. With PYPAINT we aim at contributing to securing the extreme value of artworks in Europe and worldwide.