Wikidata talk:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Archive/2017

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Hunting for missing inventory numbers

Currently we use the combination of inventory number (P217) and collection (P195) to be able to uniquely identify a work. This of course asumes that inventory number (P217) is unique within a collection (P195). Before I add a new collection I first go over the existing paintings and add the missing inventory numbers. This way the bot expands the existing items instead of creating new (duplicate) items. I spend more time on finding the inventory numbers than on the actual import (example edit). It's generally a fun puzzle and I hope other people are willing to help out here. Some numbers: We seem to have almost 140.000 paintings of which 127.000 have a collection and inventory number. With private collection (Q768717) filtered out that leaves us with about 9900 paintings (of which 1200 are works by Edvard Munch (Q41406)) that could use an inventory number. On User:Multichill/Painting collections without inventory number I put a breakdown per collection. To facilitate in distributing this work I created lists per country. In each list it's grouped by collection. This makes it easier to do it in small chunks. The lists:

We'll probably never going to get these lists completely empty: Some collections don't have inventory numbers or don't have them available online. Just focus on the works that are in museums with a decent collection website. I hope you want to help. Would be much appreciated. Multichill (talk) 11:02, 17 September 2016 (UTC) WikiProject sum of all paintings has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.

Thanks for this (very interesting!) breakdown. It would be nice to filter out the smaller collections that don't have inventory numbers, such as public buildings (town halls, libraries, etc.). Maybe we should make a property to designate collections that are big enough to have inventory numbers? This could help with sorting the work and gaging our progress. I am going to assume that the number of public collections with important and valuable paintings without inventory numbers is much bigger than the number of those public collections with inventory numbers. Jane023 (talk) 12:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
I have no easy way of filtering it out. Before I posted it here I already worked quite a bit on this. It's quite easy, as a human, to just skip collections. Just start puzzling and you'll notice which collections work and which not. Feel free to but notes on the top of each page to indicate what you checked and didn't work out. Multichill (talk) 20:03, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Probably we can administer a claim 'collection has inventory numbers'? --Hannolans (talk) 10:52, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

User:Multichill/Paintings in the Prado has a lot of paintings without an inventory number. I could really use a hand here. When it's complete I can import the remaining paintings. Multichill (talk) 19:33, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

If it's of help we have a subset of Prado paintings in Europeana. The inventory number (what Prado calls Número de catálogo) is in dc:identifier. --DivadH (talk) 09:22, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer David, almost every painting on Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Museo del Prado has an inventory number now and the remaining paintings have been imported. Multichill (talk) 10:37, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Depicts versus main subject

I've been linking a few portraits to their subjects recently (lots of dead MPs) and keep making the mistake of using 'main subject' rather than 'depicts'. I've run up a query to track these - any painting which has a person used as "main subject". tinyurl.com/z6bzx4z - will try and work through some of these, but I suspect it'll recur in future, so may as well log it here! Andrew Gray (talk) 22:57, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Andrew Gray: Picking up an old thread here, so I hope people still read this, but I think we have a problem. It is actually really useful to be able to distinguish the main subject of a picture from incidental details that it may also depict -- eg to know that the picture is primarily a picture of Mrs X, not her fur hat.
So actually, I'd suggest it would be better to go the other way, and make sure that the main subject of a portrait is identified using main subject (P921), with depicts (P180) more often used for details. Jheald (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
Not really my speciality, but worth noting that there are about fifty painting items with a person as main subject (P921) & almost 9,000 with a person as depicts (P180) - so usage looks fairly established! Might be quite complex to change now... Andrew Gray (talk) 12:57, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

subject named as (P1810)

I wonder if it would be a good idea to consider rolling out subject named as (P1810) (in English: "named as") systematically as a qualifier for external database ID statements.

For example, see eg the page for Jan Vermeer van Haarlem the Elder (Q3159680):

  • "Jan Vermeer van Haarlem (I)" for the Dutch RKD (and also at Wiki Commons);
  • "Vermeer van Haarlem, Jan, II" for the Getty museum's ULAN service (who count his father as Jan I);
  • "Meer, Johann van der" for the German GND

-- it's quite useful to be able to see the different preferences, which could otherwise be quite confusing.

Another advantage would be to be able to reliably draw this information for templates on wikis such as en:Template:Art UK bio, eg to avoid saying "27 paintings by or after Charles Walter Simpson (English artist) at the Art UK site", without having to put in the over-ride locally by hand.

What do people think? Jheald (talk) 21:27, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Almost 200.000, now what?

The number of paintings has been increasing over time. It's probably not going to take very long for us to reach the 200.000 paintings mark. Coverage is increasing, but how far are we from "all"? I looked at some other similar projects:

So in terms of coverage I think we made a good start. I use bots to increase this coverage. In my opinion it's easier to expand existing items than have to start all from scratch. I hope you agree.

Increasing coverage is one, but increasing depth is also important. To assist in this I restructured a lot of the pages. Dividing a huge pile of work into smaller parts is a good way to get it to a more human scale and to make progress. I'll go through the steps from no item or an empty item to a much more expansive item.

People start articles about paintings on Wikipedia on a daily basis. We need to find these paintings on Wikipedia and monitor for paintings which have an article in the some Wikipedia, but are missing in creator (P170) or collection (P195). Usually the Wikipedia article contains this information so it's easy to add.

We also have a separate tree under Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Missing creator for missing creators. It's split out by country to have lists of decent size. We also have an overview of paintings that don't have a creator, but do have an image, Commons might have information about to painter.

To improve the quality of our items about painters we have the check creator page: This is a list of paintings (painting (Q3305213)) with creator (P170) set, but the target item doesn't have occupation (P106) -> painter (Q1028181). All painters (or at least most of them) should have at least one authority file (Q36524) link. Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator no authority control gives an overview of painters where it's not the case and Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator no proper authority control is a bit stricter. These authority control links help to add more information to our painters for example the fact that they are dead or missing the date of birth. Under Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator you can view and create lists of works by painters.

Most paintings are or have been in one or multiple collections. On Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Missing collection we have a list of paintings no collection (P195) set. The collection combined with the inventory number (P217) gives an unique identifier which helps prevent to create the same item twice. Under Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Missing inventory number is a list of items without an inventory number, so you can add these. This list is rather large so it's split out by country (some statistics). Under Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection you can view and create lists of paintings in a certain collection.

It's nice to have the painter, collection and inventory number, but it's even nicer to have an image. We have quite a few well illustrated collections, but also poorly illustrated collections. Of course the work needs to be in the public domain and have an image on Commons to be able to have an image here. On Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Image suggestions you'll find suggestions for images to add.

So plenty of possible fun things to work on. Of course you can work on many more things, but for these tasks at least some infrastructure is in place to support you. I hope this inspires you. Do these pages help? What is missing that would help to make it easier here for you? Multichill (talk) 18:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC) WikiProject sum of all paintings has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.

Nice roundup of the status of your immports. Any idea how many items you have imported through painting collections? That should give some indication of where we are based on some comparisons of #paintings per import vs #paintings per collection. I think that there is at least as many paintings on Commons that can still be imported into Wikidata, but which probably don't have enough data to create a decent item (though I think creator+collection+image is probably good enough). Speaking from my experience working on "obscure painters", I always try to reuse what others have uploaded, and the old initial York project and the later WGA uploads were always good starting points. Since those initiatives, there have been several more on Commons, and it would be nice to at least revisit York and WGA to see how we are doing. Those do at least have the minimal information along with the image, though I wouldn't upload the image without checking first if there isn't a better one. There are many instances where the York/WGA one has the metadata, but a better image has since been uploaded under an "own work" template. I wonder if it would be possible to find "own work" images linked to Wikipedia project pages for artists? This seems to me to be low-hanging fruit for us, since the images are there but currently only described in one project. Jane023 (talk) 07:54, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Also interesting is this query which shows the number of items about a PD painting which have a Wikipedia link (shows about 24,000 aticles about 1000 PD paintings) vs this query which shows about 100,000 paintings connected to 7,500 PD painters (both lists are filtered for those who died before 1947 so they are possible creators on Commons). So eg in the first list there are almost 500 articles linking to Vermeer (from various projects) but only 37 painting items linking to his painter item. This means that currently only half of all paintings on Wikidata are by PD painters and of those, only about 1,000 PD painters have more than one painting linked to them, whereas it's safe to assume that most PD painters on Wikidata are notable for more than one painting. I think we have some Commons harvesting work to do!!!! Jane023 (talk) 08:50, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Multichill: Thanks for the great summary and very helpful subpages! Would it help to start importing en-masse? --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:01, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Commons coverage

A pyramid

I've been working on adding more paintings to add more coverage. Let's imagine all the paintings as a pyramid with the very important (or well known) paintings at the top and the very base as the paintings that barely make the notability criteria. We probably have the very top because these paintings like Mona Lisa (Q12418) and The Milkmaid (Q167605) have Wikipedia articles in multiple languages. By uploading paintings per collection, like I do, the total number of paintings increase. The paintings are probably distributed all over the hypothetical pyramid. I would like to increase coverage near the top, but how to decide which paintings are important? I figured I should look on Commons. The Google Cultural Institute (old name: Google Art) initial upload contained about 9000 files that can be easily identified as paintings. I added the tracker categories for files with and without a Wikidata item. We're at about 90% done here so time to have a look at other sources. The ones I identified:

Do you think these sources give a good coverage near the top? Any suggestions for similar other sets that I might have missed?

Some of these images that are not linked yet already have an item on Wikidata, others haven't. For example one that is present in all sets (and linked):

  • From Google
    From Google
  • From WGA
    From WGA
  • From Yorck (shouldn't have been overwritten)
    From Yorck (shouldn't have been overwritten)

@Poulpy: @Shonagon: I noticed you have been creating new items about paintings based on Commons. How would you approach this? The source data is quite messy. We risk creating a lot of duplicates items here. On the other hand, merging is quite easy. Multichill (talk) 17:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello Multichill! There is a tool for that: commons-wd and a very efficient one, with file choice, visual check, possibility of single or multi-edition. Of course a good start for every massive items creation is always to request the exsting items. And yes there is still a risk of duplicates as with any massive creations. But the big point of this approach is to be an editorial approach based on a Commons Category (with subcategories) on a subject, an artist, or anything else; there is a good motivation to make a larger as possible and good dataset on Wikidata in this context (as lists in Wikipedia articles), and to enjoy it after. At least, the main issue could be the contributor bias, focused on personnal points of interests, which are in the other hand a great engine for contribution. Best regards. --Shonagon (talk) 21:26, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
I would say every painting of a notable artist should be notable.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:48, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Possibly not notable sketch by Leonardo da Vinci
About WGA collection: It has good metadata and bad image quality. Over the years I was quite supportive of deleting WGA images where better copies exist as long as the metadata is preserved. So a lot of notable works might no longer have WGA images. One criteria could be artworks for which we have categories, since that often mean that many copies from many sources were collected. I also agree with Ymblanter that artworks of a notable artists tend to be notable. Although I can imagine doodles and random sketches of notable artist which are not notable, while the book where they come from might be. --Jarekt (talk) 21:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies and links Shonagon. I added http://tools.wmflabs.org/wd-art/commons-wd/ to my bookmarks.
@Ymblanter: (and @Jarekt:) I think you missed the point. This is not about if a painting is notable or not, this is about adding more very notable paintings and where to find these. The people who selected works for Google, Yorck and WGA considered these paintings important. By making the paintings on Wikidata a superset of these, we know that our coverage is relatively better. We don't know where that puts us on an absolute scale from zero to all paintings, but we do know we're closer to all than these three.
As for the sketch to the right here. That's out of scope for this project; it's not a painting. Multichill (talk) 19:20, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
When importing from Commons we risk creating duplicate items. I've setup Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Image suggestions and Commons:User:Multichill/Same image without Wikidata some ago to get more files linked and reduce the number of possible duplicates. It uses the creator, collection and inventory number to suggest matches. Matches based on inventory number are almost exhausted because for a lot of images on Commons, we don't have an inventory number. The collection & creator based suggestions on the other hand are overloaded:
Each key combination can hold many suggestions. So my guess is that 10.000+ files can still be connected to Wikidata items. The reports I produce were never intended for this scale and are more like a proof-of-concept getting out of hand. What we need is a good interface to work on these matches. Some functionality I can think of:
  • Possibility to filter by creator and/or by collection
  • One click match
  • Mark a combination as not a match to prevent it from showing up in the future
Who wants to help to build such a thing? @Shonagon:? I'm already collecting all the data needed as input twice a day. I can just publish this in some structured format (json) and another tool can grab that and offer a nice interface to the users. Maybe even a game at some point? Multichill (talk) 17:04, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Painting in two collections merged

I merged Q26706667 and Q28564088, the painting appears in two collections, allocated and on loan. Since then Listeriabot is adding and removing this painting: 8 feb, 9 feb, 10 feb, 11 feb, 12 feb, 13 feb, 14 feb, 15 feb. What is the problem? --Vriullop (talk) 08:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Vriullop: thanks for merging these duplicates!. The bot uses https://query.wikidata.org which has multiple member server. Took me a bit of poking, but sometimes I get 208 requests (not included) and sometimes I get 209 results. To reproduce: Open 
SELECT ?item WHERE { ?item wdt:P170 wd:Q37693 . MINUS { ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q15727816 } } LIMIT 300
Try it!
. Run the query. Look at the result. Increase the LIMIT by one (301, 302, etc). Run the query. Keep doing this and at some point you'll see differences. We probably already have a bug open for this somewhere. Easiest way to fix this is to do an edit at Harvest: Le Pouldu (Q26706667) to trigger an update. Multichill (talk) 16:24, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. After an edit it seems stable with the same number of results. --Vriullop (talk) 18:46, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Duplicate ?

Can anyone check wether The Morning Walk (Q3713940)and The Morning Walk (Q26492653) are actually the same painting ? Same image used for both but it.wikipedia says the former is in a private collection in New York City, while we know for sure that the latter is in the National Gallery. Just made a quick internet look-up but could not find much details about it. --Zolo (talk) 15:28, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Tricky one, National Gallery mentions: "This sketch provided the starting point for a painting of 1885, 'The Seine at Courbevoie' (private collection).", so we have a different painting out there. Probably the one displayed at http://www.georgesseurat.org/Seine-at-Courbevoie.html / https://www.wikiart.org/en/georges-seurat/the-seine-at-courbevoie-1885 and that leads me to The Seine at Courbevoie (Q3212766), but that one seems to be in a different private collection. We need decent sources to figure this one out. I think the only thing we're fairly sure about is that the wrong image is used on The Morning Walk (Q3713940) and the Italian article.
To make it a bit easier I created Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator/Georges Seurat. Multichill (talk) 15:41, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Just found this, that seems to show the the two items are about the same sketch. The owner mentioned in it.wikipedia has died, the sketch is now in the National Gallery, but still belongs to a private owner. it.wikipedia does not mention it is a sketch, but the article is is just something of a place (provenance / dimensions / picture match). It turns out we have an item about the final painting The Seine at Courbevoie (Q3212766). Do we have a property to say that a work is a study for another artwork ? --Zolo (talk) 16:10, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Descriptions

Hello! I coded a bot to add descriptions to instance of (P31) painting (Q3305213) items. By now it supports es, ca, gl, ast, oc and he (see example). Could you help me to add more languages? Thanks. Emijrp (talk) 23:01, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Same painter ?

Seems different, and yet strangely similar ? --Zolo (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

One male, one female or two painters ?

Another one: Zolo (talk) 11:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC) All identifiers in Percy Elizabeth Flora Thomas (Q21463241) refer to a "Percy Thomas" (1846-1922). Most of them state or assume that he wa a male. But one of the links use a longer name, [ Percy Thomas that sounds pretty feminine. This is just one link, and with very little detail, so it could well be wrong, but it is also possible that other databases just assume she is a male, as this is more or less the default option, even more for someone named Percy. In case anyone feels like investigating a further.. --Zolo (talk) 11:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Request: Add documentation about "on loan" items

Hiyo. I was hoping to add information to The Bookworm (Q468217) about how it is currently on loan to the Leopold Museum (Q59435). [I saw it! And a few dozen others by the artist. A lovely collection.] I tried searching through the archives, and I see a few threads discussing the issue, but I'm not sure what the practical/final advice is...

Please could someone who understands the current situation, regarding location (P276) and collection (P195) and exhibition history (P608) and owned by (P127) and any other relevant properties, please add info to this project's page (and/or Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure), to demonstrate how to use these potentially identical or different properties? Thanks! :-)

(Sidenote: For the specific example,[1] I cannot find the beginning/end date of the loan period - if anyone can help with that, too, it'd be appreciated.) Quiddity (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

One male, one female or two painters ?

Another one: Zolo (talk) 11:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC) All identifiers in Percy Elizabeth Flora Thomas (Q21463241) refer to a "Percy Thomas" (1846-1922). Most of them state or assume that he wa a male. But one of the links use a longer name, [ Percy Thomas that sounds pretty feminine. This is just one link, and with very little detail, so it could well be wrong, but it is also possible that other databases just assume she is a male, as this is more or less the default option, even more for someone named Percy. In case anyone feels like investigating a further.. --Zolo (talk) 11:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Request: Add documentation about "on loan" items

Hiyo. I was hoping to add information to The Bookworm (Q468217) about how it is currently on loan to the Leopold Museum (Q59435). [I saw it! And a few dozen others by the artist. A lovely collection.] I tried searching through the archives, and I see a few threads discussing the issue, but I'm not sure what the practical/final advice is...

Please could someone who understands the current situation, regarding location (P276) and collection (P195) and exhibition history (P608) and owned by (P127) and any other relevant properties, please add info to this project's page (and/or Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure), to demonstrate how to use these potentially identical or different properties? Thanks! :-)

(Sidenote: For the specific example,[2] I cannot find the beginning/end date of the loan period - if anyone can help with that, too, it'd be appreciated.) Quiddity (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Showcase items?

I recommend adding a section on this project page, linking to a few complex Wikidata:Showcase_items (examples almost always help!). I see that The Night Watch (Q219831) is a proposed showcase item, but I'm not sure how old that proposal is, or if perhaps there are more or better (more complete/complex) items that could be listed as exemplary examples. Thanks! Quiddity (talk) 00:25, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Mapping Paintings

Boston University has an interesting but slightly clunky map interactive of painting histories: mappingpaintings.org. It's absolutely screaming for a WikiData integration. According to the About page they're keen to collaborate!? PatHadley (talk) 08:24, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposed session at WikidataCon 2017

I hope a lot of people active in this project are coming to WikidataCon 2017 so I submitted Wikidata:WikidataCon 2017/Submissions/Future of sum of all paintings. Multichill (talk) 21:17, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Layout notes

Notes regarding face lift of SoaP page from Wikimania:

  1. Description/Intro
  2. Highlights (i.e. Van Gogh, Joshua Johnson, etc - diversity)
  3. How you can help.
  1. Focus of the month
  1. Top 5-10 todos
  2. reports
  3. Usage examples

Subpage

  1. Creators
  2. Collections
  3. Missing reports
  1. Including games

Missvain (talk) 16:07, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Donation/gift

I have a problem with the Danish word "Gave" and its mapping to Wikidata. "Gave" is present, gift or donation. I am trying to record when someone gives a painting to a museum/gallery as a "gave". I have been using significant event (P793) together with a value. So what should this value be? gift (Q707482)? But there is also donation (Q1124860)? I have asked on Talk:Q1124860 about the difference. What are your suggestion? — Finn Årup Nielsen (fnielsen) (talk) 12:37, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I have the same question. As I recall, Liam and I tried to propose "Credit line" since there are so many ways of giving (such as "giving in lieu of taxes" or"giving in the name of someone else" or "purchased with funds from xxx bequest". The property for credit line was shot down as being a text-based property which is frowned upon. Ideas for modeling are welcome and significant event is probably better than nothing. Jane023 (talk) 15:49, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
if I recall one of the other examples of how "credit line" was useful is that it is the only way to accomodate contractually required wall-panel statements such as "donated to the xyz museum in loving memory of their grandfather", or potentially even some of the more elaborate copyright/attributions statements people sometimes require. This is separate from information that is [potentially] structured data such as "on loan from x to y". Wittylama (talk) 22:13, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
We will have this situation also for the 'attribution' requirement for Creative Commons licenses in wikidata where a custom credit line might be needed.--Hannolans (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Pieter Casteleyn

https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/15832 and http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00033499 could well be the same peson, but can a Dutch speaker, or someone familiar with 17th century Netherlands confirm it ? --Zolo (talk) 10:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

@Zolo: same name, active in the same time in Haarlen? Good enough for me, I think that's the same person. Multichill (talk) 19:27, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
Ok thanks done. The tricky thing with using name and places is that painters often come by families, but actually given how well "born in 1618" matches "pupil in 1635", I am not quite sure why I hesitated. --Zolo (talk) 16:53, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Lorenzo di Niccolò

Could somebody take a look at Lorenzo di Niccolò (Q763820) <---> Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino (Q3259520) ? (See also MnM search)

Mostly we seem to have fr:Lorenzo di Niccolò Gerini and fr:Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino combined at the first item; but French wiki appears to have them as two separate individuals, claiming one studied under the other.

(Prompted by the attribution for this painting Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (Q20543847) at the MFA in Boston, which triggered Multichill's page for artists credited without any authority control)

I would be grateful if anyone could look in to this. Jheald (talk) 16:35, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Merge?

Q19824219 and Q19824220? --Magnus Manske (talk) 08:00, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

✓ Done--Ymblanter (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Museu Paulista GLAM Initiative

Hi all! We are currently running a GLAM initiative with Museu Paulista, that led to a [pilot upload], and though I know the existence of this WikiProject I am not sure what I should do to have the paintings we are currently uploading feed the project. Can anyone help me out? Thanks. --Joalpe (talk) 17:40, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm it looks like you started the wrong way around; namely uploading to Commons. You can better upload your data to Wikidata first, which makes it easier to filter out the ones not suitable for Commons, such as the paintings by painters who died less than 70 years ago. Those will be deleted, unfortunately. It appears you do have a painting at the top of this list that is well documented on Wikipedia/Wikidata/and Commons. You should use that as an example of the metadata suitable for all three Special:WhatLinksHere/Q371803. Best, Jane023 (talk) 07:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
@Jane023: Hello. Thanks for your prompt reply. (1) My specific question is: may we submit paintings to Wikidata that do not have an entry on Wikipedia? I have seen the Google Art Project do so, and I thought this would be an occasion for this kind of upload (I am not so familiar with Wikidata yet, and I thought this would be a good occasion to learn hands-on); (2) No worry about the paintings whose artists died less than 70 years ago, the museum director has clearly stated the museum has necessary rights to do such an upload, and at this point there seems to be some controversy on whether or not these paintings will be deleted as is --and I am just waiting to see how this controversy evolves to be able to consolidate a request to the museum director for better documentation. Thanks a lot. --Joalpe (talk) 11:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes your museum's paintings are definitely notable enough for Wikidata (not sure about drawings and prints). So you can go ahead and upload the metadata for the paintings (hopefully with P18 filled, and in any case a url from Wikidata to the website version in P973). The museum may have full rights to show the paintings on their website (that is often the case), but it is very rare that a museum also has the rights to release images into the public domain for other institutions to re-use. Remember, the Commons is beholden to the copyright rules of the United States, because that is where the servers reside. I noticed this one which is why I checked the copyright tags. Jane023 (talk) 12:42, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

To illustrate, I made this Retrato de Marechal Arouche (Q40550820) item for you as an example. Jane023 (talk) 12:54, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jane023: Thanks! Is there a way to create this Wikidata itens automatically? The item you have created the entry on is part of a 149-image pilot. But we are dealing with a large collection of around 110,000 itens. Our Commons uploads have been done --in this GLAM and other initiatives-- with pattypan; is there something similar we could use to create itens on Wikidata? How is this being done with the Metropolitan GLAM initiative or the Google Art Project? Do we need to create a bot to perform such automatic creation? Thanks a lot. --Joalpe (talk) 18:13, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, the Wikidata version of Pattypan is "quick statements". Jane023 (talk) 09:04, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

"Credit line" from Commons artwork template

Gabrielle Hope - Cattle 1950

In editing the Wikidata item for Cattle (Q28473701), I was able to pull most of its data from the Artwork template of the image file on Commons and its museum listing page. But I don't see a property/way to add the item's credit line (for instance in this case "Gift of the National Council of Adult Education, Jubilee (1938-88) donation, 1988.") Am I missing the method, or do we not put this info on Wikidata? It seems potentially valuable to track in some way but not sure how. Sweet kate (talk) 20:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Here donated by (P1028) with qualifier point in time (P585):1988 should do it. For other cases see also Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure#Object history or provenance. A monolingual text type "credit line" property was proposed but rejected because it wouldn't be structured. --Marsupium (talk) 10:59, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Time it was proposed again, then. Jheald (talk) 07:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. The Credit Line is something that is frequently a contractual obligation of the GLAM when reviving a loan or donated artwork - and is sometimes the most hotly contested piece of text on the wall panel. It has to be “just so”. And yes, it is basically unstructured-data even though some of the elements in it might be structurable in other properties (the donor, The year...). Specifically I’m thinking of phrases like “purchased from the xyz estate with the generous support of the abc Trust in 1988, on permanent loan” Wittylama (talk) 08:38, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, you've proposed it at Wikidata:Property proposal/Archive/47#Credit line. The meaning of credit lines is often of interest here. But why should we care about the wording of some "contractual obligation"? Indeed, “purchased from the xyz estate with the generous support of the abc Trust in 1988, on permanent loan” should be expressed with structured means. --Marsupium (talk) 18:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Remark: We would need something like creditline for 'Creative Commons Attribution' licenses. In Commons it is possible to add the exact attribution text as variable in the template if the person request such creditline. --Hannolans (talk) 19:46, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
I would argue that we should care about the credit line, because the GLAM concerns about the credit line. This is a metadata field that is universal, and universally important, to an industry that has great potential to share structured data with us. I would argue that would that in itself is sufficient - the GLAM sector says “credit line” is important then it’s important enough for us. And yes, while the example I made up (above)has individual pieces that could probably be structured, in many cases it won’t be or at least not all of it. Many art donors, for example, will be people/families who are otherwise not notable enough to have a Wikidata item of their own, and will require a freetext field in order to be able to store that info. Here’s an example I just worked on from the Met: Erasmus von Rotterdam (Q40703137) which has a credit line of “Fletcher Fund, 1919”[3] although neither of these pieces of info appear elsewhere in the metadata. — Wittylama (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
(For reference: Categories for the Description of Works of Art (Q5051819) has also a section on free text credit lines.):::::::@Hannolans: You mean for c:Commons:Structured data? Wikidata data is CC-0. I'm afraid I didn't understand what works and their licence you refer to.
@Wittylama: Don't get me wrong I definitely want to have (most of) the information contained by credit lines here, I just don't see why the wording is of interest or who might benefit from that. Notability for donors shouldn't be a problem (WD:N). Perhaps I'm blinded with this because on continental Europe this credit thing doesn't play a big role and I'm just not familiar with it therefore. To me this "Acquired through the generous support of the Herostratus Fund" stuff always feels like the vain product of a cloying craving for recognition or glamour, sometimes advert.
What does the Fletcher Fund example mean? That it was acquired from the fund or by the fund for the MET? I think significant event (P793) should suffice, no?--Marsupium (talk) 00:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
The "Fletcher fund" is one of the main drivers for purchases for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was started as part of a generous bequest by en:Isaac Dudley Fletcher. I do think the credit line is necessary for all museums, since often these are also the key reason why works cannot be lent out for exhibitions (or sold, or put in storage, etc.). Often, understanding the technicalities of a bequest helps put works into perspective. I have really enjoyed looking at the data on the MET's recent public datadump: it gives so much insight into why certain objects are in certain galleries of that institution. Blindly importing the credit line from Commons, however, is a different matter entirely. I would be against this except for cases where the credit line came from the institution through a GLAM-wiki upload, for example. I am also not against exploring ways to structure the credit line property to accept item-only data rather than a string, that would cover most cases. This would need a generic "credit line explanation" item though that links out to the museum's website for tricky cases. Jane023 (talk) 09:12, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, having a monolingual text property that's sparingly used where it's difficult to structure the information (for lack of means of expression (these should be established nevertheless, but an editor might not have the resources at some time, so this can also be use provisionally) or for lack of an item for an agent (person/organization; that, too, should be created, but sometimes it's not practical, so in the manner of author name string (P2093))) sounds reasonable to me. The Fletcher Fund example is a case where this is not needed in my eyes, but I guess it won't harm either. --Marsupium (talk) 09:30, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Ha! As you can see here I disagree that the "Fletcher fund" distinction is non-notable. Precisely in cases where large amounts of money are needed, I think it is crucial that museums can rely on unfettered bequests such as the Fletcher fund and we should do what we can on and off wiki to encourage these in general. The portrait in question has been included in all of the highlight catalogs of the museum since its purchase and remains a perennial favorite of the public (considering also the age of this article about it). But enough discussion about the "how" because I think we have established need for a property. Next step is to define the types of qualifiers the Credit line property should accept. I propose these: "bequest of" with object item being <person or duo or fund organization>; next "purchased for the museum by" <same object items>; "part of" <collection the museum took over for some reason>; "purchase from" <auction house, private sale, secret museum negotiation such as 1930s Hermitage sales, etc with dates>. The fact that many donors requested to remain anonymous is a tricky one. Also tricky are the bequests by people in the name of their spouse, parent, sibling, child etc. I loved these though since it finally allows you to trace the original donor (which in such cases is often a woman). Jane023 (talk) 09:47, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Non-human creator

Here's a query that looks for non-human creators of paintings. I've fixed some of them, but there are about 100 left. Most are unknown values (maybe should be anonymous), some are redirects, some are firms or groups, some are DABs, and one is a street. 

SELECT ?painting ?paintingLabel ?creator ?creatorLabel
{ 
  ?painting wdt:P31 wd:Q3305213 .
  ?painting wdt:P170 ?creator .
  #      not                          human
  filter not exists {?creator wdt:P31 wd:Q5 .} .
  #      not                          artist collective
  filter not exists {?creator wdt:P31 wd:Q1400264 .} .
  # anonymous is OK
  filter (?creator != wd:Q4233718) .
  
  SERVICE wikibase:label {
     bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" .} .
}
try it

Glrx (talk) 01:20, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Cool! I repaired some, now still a collection of all kind of (semi-)anonymous variants and redirects. --Hannolans (talk) 14:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Seems to be a subset of Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Check creator? Multichill (talk) 16:59, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Anonymous

I should have mentionned that much earlier, but I am not thrilled at all with the use of anonymous (Q4233718) in creator (P170). "Anonymous" usually implies that the creator in some way wished to remain unknown like in "anonymous letter". Sometimes, it just means that it was not signed, but we wouldn't use "anonymous" on Mona Lisa here, even though it is not signed. Here, we use "anonymous", we really just mean "unknown", so what not use the standard way provided by Wikibase for that, the "somevalue" special value ? Structurally, it is much sounder, as it does not require the ad hoc fudging on the common-sense semantic rule that the creator (P170) should point to a identifiable person or group of people.-Zolo (talk) 10:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

 Support I also often thought that. --188.108.136.88 10:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
This is for historic reasons. Most of the time in sources, the unknown artist is referred to as "anonymous". Many painters would have liked to sign their names, but were unable to do so because they had not paid their dues into the local Guild of St. Luke. Sometimes they later signed works after doing so, but mostly not. Anonymous does not mean "wishing to remain anonymous" when it comes to paintings. Jane023 (talk) 10:52, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
@Jane023: that seems to make sense, but does not really match how "anonymous" is used in Wikidata. Here "anonymous" is used for "unknown", not "unsigned". If the artist was not able to sign but historians know who she was, Wikidata will use name of the artist, not "anonymous". I sense that what you mention would be best expressed through a different property than creator (P170), though I am not sure how. -Zolo (talk) 17:22, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
True. You could propose some properties to narrow this down further (we already have quite a few qualifiers for anonymous), but in general, "anonymous" is more accurate than "unknown" if you compare what institutions and catalogs use. Jane023 (talk) 17:50, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
(The IP above was me logged out for any reason.) I just found the Getty Vocabulary Program also discussing the term (albeit in another situation), providing a point militating in favour of "unknown" if I get it right: “Unknown People […] Note this facet has variant label "anonymous" because some repositories use this term to indicate unknown people. Nevertheless, it's very different from Anonymous Masters.” (http://vocab.getty.edu/doc/#ULAN_Hierarchy_and_Classes) Similar CDWA (sections "Anonymous creators" and "Unknown creators"). Cheers, --Marsupium (talk) 06:30, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
I would like to add for consideration that for legal issues on copyright there is a difference between unknown and anonymous. For anonymous works the copyright is 70 years after publication in Europe. For unknown authors it is not and a diligent search is required whether the publication was anonymous --Hannolans (talk) 12:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
So it seems anonymous has not one unambiguous meaning. "unknown" may be less frequently used for artworks, but semantically, it just seems to be the most appropriate term for what we need here. --Zolo (talk) 07:25, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
I think the decision shouldn't be in the end about the words "unknown" and "anonymous" (then we could discuss which label to chose for the item), but about the meaning of "unknown value" in this database – and I think this includes the meaning of anonymous (Q4233718) as we use it. So, yes, I think the proposed change is reasonable. --Marsupium (talk) 14:11, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

This discussion is strongly related to the one about "schools", e.g. "17th-century British School" as a genre. The (mis-)use of genre to more accurately describe an unknown creator might be an industry problem we also want to address somehow. I do think we need to find a way to model "pupil(s) or follower(s) of so-and-so" rather than naming each pupil or follower, when "studio of" is not possible (i.e. "so-and-so" died 20 years previously to the date of the painting). We already have "follower of" but this can just indicate people who made copies a few centuries after the fact. Sometimes we know a painting is of the period (forensic analysis) but just don't know more about where/who created it. My gut feeling is that we want all of this modelling on the creator property and not on the genre property. Jane023 (talk) 08:07, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

 Support for your gut feeling! --Marsupium (talk) 14:11, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

A "panel" is a group of people assembled to discuss a topic.

Why does this propose that "panel" should be described as a material for painting? Surely a panel—a group of people assembled to discuss a topic—is not a painting material. BD2412 (talk) 14:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: mixing up panel (Q21416136) and panel (Q1348059)? You're not really giving any context like where this is proposed. Multichill (talk) 13:44, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
See User talk:BD2412#Please stop adding panel painting to materials used. But I didn't understand it there either. --Marsupium (talk) 14:01, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
Okay, here is the problem in a nutshell. The Dutch Wiki has an article on the concept of the "panel", i.e. the material used in making a panel painting. English Wikipedia does not have a separate article on this topic, but covers it in a section of the article on "Panel painting". Apparently, because there is no English Wikipedia article specifically on the type of wood, when "panel" is used as a material in Wikidata, this calls the English Wikipedia disambiguation page, "Panel" - which is not relevant to paintings. I don't understand why Wikidata would provide any link at all if there is no correct link to provide (there is no English link in panel (Q1348059). The links provided for the three languages there are actually very inconsistent - the German article is about ceiling panels (not used for painting) and the Scots-Gaelic article is one line about both panels as construction material and as groups of experts, but not at all about painting - so there is no real benefit to anyone who isn't speaking Dutch to even have this Wikidata item. The entries are inaccurate, and it is not collecting different-language names for the same thing, but similar-sounding names for fairly different things. In the meantime, there is no way to link to the content in English Wikipedia that is relevant to panels as a painting material, because this is already dedicated to panel painting (Q55439). Incidentally, most languages cover the material under their articles on the kind of painting. BD2412 (talk) 15:14, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
Well I won't touch Gaelic but I made a new item for the German article here laminated panel (Q41703374). It's funny I have looked at panelling and other types of lumber materials before - it keeps coming back to haunt me. Jane023 (talk) 16:02, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
Is there a way to make the Wikidata item point to the section of the English Wikipedia article covering this topic? Since it is already covered there, it is unlikely that there will ever be a separate English Wikipedia article specifically about this topic. BD2412 (talk) 16:57, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
No, there isn't. You can read about that problem here: Wikidata:Requests for comment/Sitelinks with fragments. There is also a new RfC running about links to redirects that breaks the problem down into more parts. If you start looking at the possibilities it gets pretty confusing pretty quickly. Jane023 (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Materials used

In response to the discussionabove I have created a listeria list of the materials currently used for paintings here Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Material. I think it is pretty clear that most usage is for canvas, but I am not sure whether these should be changed to one item (currently most link to the woven fabric and a small group links to the painting surface "canvas"). Also we could probably do well to set up a proper hierarchy for panel paintings by panel composition as it is used in dendrochronology circles, if at all possible. Jane023 (talk) 11:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

one article, two paintings

Hi, I'm not sure if this question is in the right place. I'm trying to improve the article and Wikidata item/s for the Velázquez painting Kitchen Maid. The article is about both versions of the painting, one is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the other is at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. The Wikidata item Q4274886 that corresponds to the article is solely about the painting in Chicago. So the question is, should I create another Wikidata item for the Dublin painting or add the information to the existing item? Thanks in advance MassiveEartha (talk) 14:32, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so just noticed that the Dublin painting already has a Wikidata item Q11832323 with its own corresponding articles. The new questions is, how should the two articles be linked? Thanks again MassiveEartha (talk) 14:35, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
@MassiveEartha: The approach of Sunflowers (Q157541) is the one currently used as far as I know, so: An item for the series and one for each part of it liked to it with part of the series (P179). As to the right place: I think this is one of the four right places (unfortunately existing in parallel) for your question, cf. this. --Marsupium (talk) 23:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Here a reverse approach

Hi all,

Thanks to Jane023, here is another approach to capture people not depcting in painting but where we know that a painting probably exist (because representation before 1800 are mostly painting) 

#defaultView:ImageGrid
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q5 ; wdt:P18 ?img .
  ?item wdt:P569 ?dob .
  filter ( year( ?dob ) < 1800 )
  minus { [] wdt:P180 ?item }
}
limit 100
Try it!

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 10:12, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Altarpieces

Hi, I understand that altarpiece (Q15711026) are also included in this project, is it correct?

In addition, I saw here a doubt about meaning (or similitude) of part of (P361) vs part of the series (P179). To me it is obviously different. part of (P361) may define: a) the fact to belong to a a kind of list not consider catalog (P972) or b) be a part of a big piece usually multi-image, as it happens in an altarpiece that can bo considerer as a whole or panel by panel. It's especially important when each or some panel from an altarpiece are in different location or even have been painted by different painter. See exemple: Triptych of Jan Crabbe (Q16038743) + Triptych of Jan Crabbe. Center table (Q42589069) + Jan Crabbe triptych. Left wing (Q42590948) + Triptych of Jan Crabbe. Right wing (Q42591370) + Annunciation (Q24471153). Thanks,--Amadalvarez (talk) 11:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
altarpiece (Q15711026) is polyptych (Q1278452)? --Fractaler (talk) 12:39, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes. To me polyptych (Q1278452), diptych (Q475476), triptych (Q79218), pentaptych (Q21915380), etc. are differents formats/shapes of altarpiece (Q15711026), a generic concept more related with the religious function. --Amadalvarez (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes early works are generally religious and modern works less so. However not all multi-part -tych paintings are religious, though many altarpieces tend to be in a multi-part -tych format. Jane023 (talk) 16:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, @Jane023: In our language (spanish & catalan) is more common use "altarpiece" than "polyptych". I see now, the correct definition in terms of format (not function) should be "polyptych". In the case of "diptych" or "triptych" we use the same concept and rarely refers to them as "altarpiece" even if religious.--Amadalvarez (talk) 14:17, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
polyptych (Q1278452) has parts, consists of parts? What is the name of such an item? How about altarpiece (Q15711026)? --Fractaler (talk) 18:24, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi all, in the cases described use part of (P361), not part of the series (P179). part of the series (P179) is for cases like those here though for them part of (P361) seems to be used as well.
I've made Triptych of Jan Crabbe (Q16038743) (sub-)subclass of both altarpiece (Q15711026) and polyptych (Q1278452) because there are instances of altarpiece (Q15711026) that are not polyptych (Q1278452) and vice versa. I've also updated the modelling of Triptych of Jan Crabbe (Q16038743) and its parts to what I think is currently best or common practice. Tell me if you disagree!
@Marsupium: I agree with your changes. Thanks. However, in these situations when the item show a piece that doesn't really exists "as a unit", because it's dissassembled, the collection (P195) & has part(s) (P527) share redundant information. It's not a problem while the content were not contradictory. --Amadalvarez (talk) 14:17, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
I can't remember I have seen applies to part (P518) as a qualifier on a part of (P361) statement like Jan Crabbe triptych. Left wing (Q42590948)part of (P361)Triptych of Jan Crabbe (Q16038743)applies to part (P518)right part (Q17525442) before. Is this standard? Should it be recommended in the documentation? --Marsupium (talk) 23:12, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't know. To me it helps to understand where it was before dissassembly. A query of properties with applies to part (P518) as a qualifier shows 180 items whit part of (P361). I was thinking update the documentation with this example about how to build the main item with original piece and their parts. --Amadalvarez (talk) 14:17, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

When in doubt, it helps to look at famous examples that have been dissassembled and reassembled such as Ghent Altarpiece (Q734834). Jane023 (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Good example. A polyptych, assembled, in one collection, and with a specífic item for each panel. It has no applies to part (P518), however when the polyptych can't be seen assembled, as the Jan Crabbe's example, or Altarpiece of the Saints John (Q3815496), it could be usefull. By the way, you can see the result of using this structure of data in the infobox (in cawiki). Thanks, Amadalvarez (talk) 19:26, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
w:Polyptych: Polyptych is a painting (usually panel painting) which is divided into sections, or panels...Polyptychs typically display one "central" or "main" panel that is usually the largest of the attachments, while the other panels are called "side" panels, or "wings". Sometimes, as evident in the Ghent and Isenheim works, the hinged panels can be varied in arrangement to show different "views" or "openings" in the piece. So, polyptych (Q1278452)'s parts (sections), (consists of parts/sections): central panel (main panel), side panel (wing)? Is it correct? But if diptych (Q475476)? Just sections/panels? --Fractaler (talk) 08:34, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
@Fractaler: When I started discussion, I was thinking in dissassembled group of paintings don't mind if there are, articulated polyptych, altarpieces (functional name, but used in my area for a non articulated polyptych), diptych, etc. However, being or not dissassembled, we can find an specific item for each scene or painting inside the -tych. To me, the information in WD should follow a similar structure in these differents situations. See these 4 exemples:
  • Triptych of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Q16038739). Dissassembled and reassembled triptych. All tables in the same museum. With an specific item created for each image: One item for the whole (and existent) piece + one item for each scene (because somebody considers it necessary)
  • Altarpiece of the Saints John (Q3815496). Non movable polyptych (altarpiece?). It's dissasembled in three museums: One item for the whole (and nonexistent) piece + one item (at least for each museum/collection)
  • Diptych with deposition (Q42969085). Diptych in the original place: Just one item, until somebody wish to create an specifici item for each table.
  • St John the Baptist and Veronica Diptych (Q42941289). Diptych. Dissassembled in two different museums: One item for the whole (and nonexistent) piece + one item (at least for each museum/collection). In this case, each table has two paintings (on per face) and, therefore, four items in WD.
For all of them:
do you agree ?. Thanks Amadalvarez (talk) 14:36, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
@Amadalvarez: Thank you for such a detailed analysis. It seems I see. There is an 2 type of polyptych (Q1278452) - 1) theoretical and 2) practical. Like science, there is a 1) theory, a model, and there is 2) practice). So , we have a polyptych in 1) theory (model) and 2) exanples - in practice. And you talk about what polyptychs are in practice (2). Like Mendeleyev, he created a table (theory, table of elements), then practical atoms and specimens were found on its table. Right? --Fractaler (talk) 14:54, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
@Fractarel: LOL !!. thanks for your mood. I would'nt say "theoretical", but "original". When I say "nonexistent" it refers to present time. However, when the artist painted, the polyptych was "real". In my opinion, be able to know the aspect that masterpiece had when created is important specially because, in complex polyptychs (more difficultly in diptychs), there is a story, a narration, as it were a modern comic, that it's difficult to understand if the work is not seen as created by its author. In the same way, even when the masterpiecce is not dissassembled, their complexity (as happens in mentioned Ghent Altarpiece (Q734834)) may require an specific item for each panel, although it was not out of the main structure. Thanks,Amadalvarez (talk) 15:56, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
@Amadalvarez: I see, I mean original polyptych (Q1278452). So, it had parts (sections), (consisted of parts/sections): central panel (main panel), side panel (wing)? About "polyptych is like modern comic" is great idea! Polyptych (some history in pictures) seems realy as such ancestor. Interestingly, there are polyptych series. ReadersObservers came in 1 series. Also it was pleasant. The artist recognized this, created a second polyptych's series. Etc. Fractaler (talk) 16:18, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Source of Data

Hey All, there is a project at http://www.mappingpaintings.org/ that is collecting a lot of provenance data, and may be a really good source of information for adding to our records for paintings. Sadads (talk) 16:21, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

There hasn't happened much since Wikidata talk:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Archive/2017#Mapping Paintings in July obviously. --Marsupium (talk) 22:30, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Museu Paulista GLAM Initiative

Hey all. Just an update on the contribution to this Wikiproject from the Museu Paulista GLAM initiative:

  1. All paintings from our pilot upload have now become Wikidata entries on their own. An automated control list may be found on Wikipedia in Portuguese.
  2. We are now starting to include audio descriptions of the paintings uploaded in the context of this GLAM initiative. The first audio file was just included --and we expect to bring in the next weeks 130 more. Do you feel an accessibility session should be included to this project description, hoping to connect paintings to their audible versions (if they exist)? I would definitely stress this -- and am pinging participants of this project!

WikiProject sum of all paintings has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.

I hope you are all well! --Joalpe (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Joalpe: that looks like a nice collection! Some improvements:
Shouldn't be too hard with petscan to fix. Do they have an online collection website? Would be nice to fill described at URL (P973). Multichill (talk) 19:23, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
@Multichill: Thanks a lot for this. There is indeed an enormous confusion on how these elements are described in Portuguese, which is why we messed it up. Luckily, you were there to emphasize this issue while we are still at the pilot stage :) We will try to fix this --as I have never used Petscan I will let you know, if you don´t mind, if an issue arises. Moreover, what is your take on the specifying of an accessibility concern with respect to this Wikiproject? --Joalpe (talk) 14:25, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
✓ Done improvements requested by Multichill. --Joalpe (talk) 01:19, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
@Joalpe: thanks! I created Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Museu Paulista and I noticed you started with another museum too so also Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. These pages will be updated by a bot every 30 days (or manually).
I also created Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Location/Brazil. Maybe you can expand? See the other countries for how to expand it. Multichill (talk) 19:14, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
@Multichill: Nice! I have added a third museum to the table and created the list to be updated by the bot. I will take a look on what you mean by expansion. --Joalpe (talk) 19:30, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Drawings

Hi, I'm quite sure I asked Multichill about that some time ago, but forgot his answer :-( Some newbie questions: What about drawings? Are they part of this project at all? Do they count as instance of (P31) – painting (Q3305213), would drawing (Q93184) replace painting (Q3305213) as instance, or would drawing (Q93184) be an additional subclass of painting (Q3305213)? Thanks. --Elya (talk) 17:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

The short answer is no. We do have lots of drawings however, and of course they are welcome. This project is just for paintings. We already stretch it a bit for "pen paintings", pastels, gouaches, and watercolours. We also want engravings, but those are more difficult, because there can be so many specific copies of notable ones. Feel free to start a new project based on this one, because I am sure there are lots of people who would join, considering the number of drawings used on the various projects and the wiki-love in many drawings on Commons. Jane023 (talk) 18:28, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello Jane023 :-) Oh, nooo, I won't start a new project, just start having some fun in this one ;-) As I have a single artist as starting point at the moment and browse his works in different museums, I stumble over a mixture of techniques and get curious about how to structure the different genres. Thanks for your quick and clear response! --Elya (talk) 20:11, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
In that case, the easiest thing to do is to start a catalog and start tracking it with a listeria list like the ones you can see here: Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Catalog. Many monographs of artists (like for Rembrandt or Jacob van Ruisdael) include their drawings or etchings. Generally I just skip those (so little time, so many paintings to do!) but whenever the item is already there (because a Wikipedia article has been written in some language for some reason) then I catalog it with the other items in the list. The nice thing about catalogs is they skip around to influences (like teachers or pupils) so you get a different perspective than when you just focus on oil painting output. Jane023 (talk) 07:25, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
This sounds interesting. I will get some of the literature about the artist soon, so we'll see if a catalog will materialize ;-) --Elya (talk) 08:23, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Please help adding missing creators

WikiProject sum of all paintings has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead. We have quite a few paintings (13.000 out of 225.000) that don't have creator (P170) set. To make it easier to work on this I set up Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Top collections missing creator. Who wants to help? For each painting:

  1. The creator already exists. Make sure the English label or one of the English aliases match the name in "painting by <name>" and that occupation (P106) -> painter (Q1028181). This makes sure the bot will find it and add it.
  2. The creator doesn't exist. Create it using the create link in the tool. Add any extra available information based on authority control and information on the painting

In both cases: Make sure the authority control is for the right person. The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands Art Collection (Q18600731) is the biggest, but also the hardest because the given names are missing. I wouldn't start with that one.

Help much appreciated. Multichill (talk) 10:38, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for that list! Just a question: Is there any sorting order for the artists on the lists of https://tools.wmflabs.org/multichill/painters/index.php It could be useful to order them by authority control count first and by paintings count second? Cheers, --Marsupium (talk) 10:49, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
Currently sorted by number of paintings. The authority control links are a second query on a different database (the mix'n'match database) so I can't really sort by it in a easy way. Multichill (talk) 11:53, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, I've somehow missed that they are sorted by number of paintings! That's fine! --Marsupium (talk) 12:37, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Multichill:! I looked at the Hermitage https://tools.wmflabs.org/multichill/painters/index.php?collection=Q132783 and have some questions

  • "Peter Paul (Pietro Pauolo) Rubens" (9 paintings): obviously that one exists (Peter Paul Rubens (Q5599) and he has label "Pietro Pauolo Rubens" but not the parenthesized form the Hermitage has used. So what's the fastest way to edit the paintings to say "painting by Peter Paul Rubens"?
  • Similarly a few had description "painting by Johann Friedrch August Tischbein" (misspelt Friedrch): would be great if I can edit them as a group
  • how to attribute "Peter Paul (Pietro Pauolo), school of Rubens" and "Peter Paul (Pietro Pauolo), workshop of Rubens"? It's the same artist but what qualifier to use?
  • "Unknown Italian artist" says it's NPG id "mp13238". Is it ok to identify it as a particular authority record, or we should just capture the nationality of the creator? Same for "Dutch painter"

--Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 18:03, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

To answer your questions.
Thanks for helping out! Multichill (talk) 21:32, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Engravings

I have been thinking about the engraving situation. I guess I felt helpless when I saw what appeared to be the same engraving but signed by another artist. Slowly I see that the problem is more complex than seeing signatures of different engravers, and art historians are often unaware that an engraving is a copy of another one. However RKDimages (Q17299580) has lots of specific engravings with a record number that are just used to anchor a painting in time and place. I agree that this is important, so we should be doing this as a reference method on paintings too. The question is how? Maybe a new property for "engraved by" that accepts an item for engraver with the reference being either a link out to the external identifier (Q21754218) or commons file? It could use the qualifier after a work by (P1877) which you could then use for the artist the work was attributed to in the engraving (for old paintings this is not necessarily the current attribution). What about a separate image (P18) property to display a commons file as an oil copy or study or an engraving? Would be interested to know your thoughts. Jane023 (talk) 10:06, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Jane023: I didn't quite follow. Are you talking about making Wikidata items for individual engravings? Presumably, it will be rare for an engraving to be notable in its own right -- for most engravings we would not have a Wikidata item. (At least, that's always been my assumption -- but maybe I'm wrong.) So are you talking about a property on the painting-item, to say that an engraving exists? E.g. if we had an item for this picture, are you thinking of a statement on it that this engraving was an interpretation of it? Or are you indeed suggesting that we ought to have an item for the engraving too? Jheald (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes to the "property on painting items" thing, no to "an item for every engraving". I am not against items for engravings, especially as there appear to be lots of paintings based on an engraving. The problem with creating items for engravings is that you never know whether the engraving is "the earliest one of the subject". That said, you could probably link out to The Illustrated Bartsch (TIB) (Q7741419). Jane023 (talk) 17:01, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Help for The Doctor (Q44681990)

Hello!

I have tried to make a Wikidata item for en:The Doctor (painting) with Whispyhistory who has been working on that article. According to the constraint violations on The Doctor (Q44681990) there are a few things I haven't got right. Could an experienced painting editor guide us to improve this item?

Thanks! − Pintoch (talk) 09:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Welcome. It was a duplicate so I merged it to The Doctor (Q28541710). Sorry for the short reply, time for bed. Maybe someone else feels like explaining what is wrong with this version so you can learn from it. Multichill (talk) 22:31, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
@Multichill: thanks a lot, your edits are self-explanatory! − Pintoch (talk) 10:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Normalized descriptions for objects by uncertain creators?

The Dutch description of Portrait of a Woman (Q28113786) is "schilderij omgeving van Alessandro Allori". Dutch label and description of circle of (P1776) are "cirkel van" and "omgeving van", this is also the term used by c:Module:I18n/name. Which term is the best one? And I guess there is still a preposition and an article missing? I plan to fix several hundred descriptions and I'd like to use a normalized form for the descriptions. There the problem applies also to the other qualifiers from Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure#Use of creator (P170) in uncertain cases and other languages, too. Thank you for any general or specific suggestions how to normalize the descriptions! --Marsupium (talk) 18:43, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

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