Tens of thousands of the frescoes’ fragments were, like many other objects excavated from the site of Pompeii, preserved in layers of volcanic ash. However, after research, experts determined that rejoining those pieces would be virtually impossible for humans to accomplish, and so for decades, the shards have remained in a warehouse outside of Pompeii, all but forgotten.
The team behind RePAIR—which includes experts from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev of Israel, and the Italian Institute of Technology, among other organizations—is currently in the process of training the software’s A.I. by feeding it 3D-scanned images of both individual shards and previously reconstructed clusters for analysis.
