This paper relates to computationally intensive image processing efforts applied to determine “if the artist (or artists) of the painting used archetypes (stencils) to draw this ancient painting or if the painting was drawn freehand.” Impossibly embedded here is acceptance that this painting is unique in the history of art. Accordingly, the entire study relates to this solitary aesthetic creation.

We will never know if the artist was so peculiarly gifted (fanatical in his precision of freehand shape execution) that he was able to copy his own graphical elements with mathematical exactness, or if he used, as the authors conclude, seven geometric stencils (four different hyperbolae, two different ellipses, and one linear Archimedes spiral) to repeat the graphic elements that frequently appear in the painting, or to what degree he used a combination of freehand and stencil techniques. The authors present historical evidence for the ancient Greek knowledge of such shapes, and they give a methodological, rigorous, and convincing mathematical analysis of the seven repeating shapes found in the painting. Nevertheless, there appears to be a companion project (of tremendous conceptual value for the reader) that is needed to accept the authors’ conclusions. What percent of artistic individuals possess a capacity for exact replication of shape elements? This can be determined by applying the analytic techniques of the authors to works of individual calligraphers of various languages.