minor detail

is those least significant things such as earlobes, fingernails, shapes of fingers and toes which serve as signatures among masters.

Instead one should concentrate on minor details, especially those least significant in the style typical of the painter's own school: earlobes, fingernails, shapes of fingers and toes. So Morelli identified the ear (or whatever) peculiar to such masters as Botticelli and Cosme Tura, such as would be found in originals but not in copies. Then, using this method, he made dozens of new attributions in some of the principal galleries of Europe. Some of them were sensational: the gallery in Dresden held a painting of a recumbent Venus believed to be a copy by Sassoferrato of a lost work by Titian, but Morelli identified it as one of the very few works definitely attributable to Giorgione. (ginzburg : 'morelli, freud' 7)

minor detail, n.Definitions

minor detail