Creative Processes of the Visual Arts and Generative AI. Correspondences between Michelangelo and Sebastiano Del Piombo in the Flagellation of Christ Ideation

Is it possible to visualize the creative process of the art in the making? How can we display an intangible phenomenon such as artistic research to make it perceivable and understandable? The Enacting Artistic Research project, EAR WP2, promoted by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, in partnership with Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Accademia di Belle Arti Milano-Brera, Conservatorio di Roma “Santa Cecilia”, Conservatorio di L’Aquila “Alfredo Casella”, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare—Università di Roma Tre and Università Politecnica delle Marche, is intended to reveal the steps of the imaginative dimension of the ideas through the connection of the successive phases of the preparatory drawings for a painting, or any other work of art, through artificial intelligence. In the Enacting Artistic Research (EAR) project, a series of examples were identified for the choice of a case study that could lend itself to the continuous representation of the creative process from the first idea to the chosen pictorial solution. In order to enhance the creative process, the paper will present a workflow for the analysis, knowledge creation and storytelling of the artistic process, based on Gigapixel images, Artificial Intelligence generative tools and Large Language Models. The pilot case introduces innovative investigative and visual restitution techniques, such as virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), advanced imaging, and 3D modeling, unveiling artistic research within creative processes, opening new avenues of aesthetic understanding.