deattribution

plural deattributions · alternative de-attribution

1. Discontinuance of attributing a work of art or literature, etc. to a particular creator, especially in a case where a work is reassigned from a prominent creator to a lesser or unknown creator.

   Attributions, deattributions, and reattributions are often more easily made after reviewing x-radiographs, infrared reflectograms, dendrochronological data, and pigment analyses.

   2006, W. Stanley Taft Jr., James W. Mayer, The Science of Paintings, →ISBN, page 9

   2 more examples

   Deattribution of Rembrandt paintings has been going on among art historians for decades, constantly winnowing a corpus inflated by the 17th- and 18th-century practice of regarding many works simply in Rembrandt's style as "by the master."

   1986 September 30, Douglas C. McGill, “Met to Relabel 2 of Its ‘Rembrandts’”, in New York Times, retrieved 25 Sep 2015

   [I]n the world of art, authors are always dying off. Works that were previously assigned to a known name, works that were among the most famous, find themselves stranded in anonymity. The process is called de-attribution.

   2009 April 24, “A Dead Soldier (17th century), Anonymous Italian”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 25 Sep 2015