This conference on computer image analysis in the study of art presents leading research in the application of image analysis, computer vision, and pattern recognition to problems of interest to art historians, curators and conservators. A number of recent questions and controversies have highlighted the value of rigorous image analysis in the service of the analysis of art, particularly painting. Consider these examples: the fractal image analysis for the authentication of drip paintings possibly by Jackson Pollock; sophisticated perspective, shading and form analysis to address claims that early Renaissance masters such as Jan van Eyck or Baroque masters such as Georges de la Tour traced optically projected images; automatic multi-scale analysis of brushstrokes for the attribution of portraits within a painting by Perugino; and multi-spectral, x-ray and infra-red scanning and image analysis of the Mona Lisa to reveal the painting techniques of Leonardo. The value of image analysis to these and other questions strongly suggests that current and future computer methods will play an ever larger role in the scholarship of visual arts.