ABSTRACT
Prior to the use of photography as a documentary tool, connoisseurship could be thought of as almost a form of quackery. 1 In the 1870s, however, Giovanni Morelli, an Italian physician, ushered in the modern era of connoisseurship with a scientific approach that systematically utilized photographs for the comparative study of painting. 2 Morelli assumed that artists do not capriciously change their manner when painting the minor details of a subject. He would analyze an artist's treatment of such features as earlobes, fingernails, and toes for clues as to problems of authenticity. By examining the photographs of several examples of work from an artist's attributed ouevre, any variance in such features would become immediately apparent to the trained eye of the connoisseur. 3
