MADRID.- The Museo Nacional del Prado’s groundbreaking digital project Aracne has been named a finalist in the Digital Innovation of the Year category at the 2025 Apollo Awards, one of the art world’s most prestigious international recognitions. Developed in collaboration with the University of Seville, the project is transforming how experts study, date, and attribute paintings — redefining the very fabric of art research, quite literally.
Named after the mythological weaver, Aracne is a software tool that automatically analyzes the threads of a painting’s canvas using high-resolution photographs and X-rays. By applying advanced frequency-based algorithms, it can count and compare the warp and weft of the linen or cotton used by artists. This allows researchers to determine whether different artworks were painted on canvases from the same roll of fabric, leading to new insights about authorship, chronology, and workshop practices.
“Aracne has given us a completely new way to look beneath the surface of a painting,” said a Prado Museum conservator involved in the project. “It provides objective, repeatable data that complements the trained eye of art historians.”
A Decade of Collaboration and Discovery
The tool is the result of more than ten years of collaboration between the Prado and the University of Seville’s School of Engineering. What began as an experiment in image processing evolved into a powerful instrument for art historical research. Since the Prado made the software openly accessible in 2024, museums and scholars around the world have begun to apply its algorithms to their own collections, revealing connections that were previously invisible to the human eye.
The Apollo jury praised Aracne for its global impact and for how it bridges art and technology. In its category review, Apollo noted that the project has already produced groundbreaking results — such as confirming that Peter Paul Rubens painted his copy of Titian’s The Rape of Europa in Madrid between 1628 and 1629, rather than later in Antwerp. Another example includes the reattribution of The Artillery General, once believed to be by Francisco Rizzi, now credited to Herrera the Younger thanks to Aracne’s canvas analysis.
A Model for Open Innovation in Museums
By sharing Aracne as an open-access platform, the Prado has signaled a shift toward greater transparency and collaboration in museum research. “The idea is not to keep this within one institution,” the project’s developers explain, “but to give the entire art world a tool that enhances knowledge and preserves cultural heritage.”
The nomination underscores a growing trend in the museum world: the embrace of digital tools to expand access, improve conservation, and deepen understanding. Previous winners of the Apollo Award for Digital Innovation include Smartify, Art UK, and the Factum Foundation — all projects that use technology to connect people with art in new and transformative ways.
As Prado Director Miguel Falomir noted when the project launched, “Innovation doesn’t mean replacing human expertise — it means empowering it.”
With Aracne, the Prado Museum has woven together science, art, and accessibility, creating a tool that may forever change the way the world studies the masterpieces of the past.
