Wikidata talk:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Archive/2023

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Sum of all portrait paintings: 91.000+

Hi folks, we currently have well over 91.000+ portrait paintings (query). I wrote some documentation about this. We have about 45.00 paintings with depicts and about 23.000 with main subject set to something, but that still leaves us with 46.000 portrait paintings without depicts (P180) and 67.000 without main subject (P921). Any ideas how to improve these numbers? Any tools to make it easy for people to add relevant depicts (P180) statements? Multichill (talk) 16:57, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

@Multichill: I must say that I almost forgot main subject (P921) myself (noticing it just now thanks to Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Property statistics for the import of Museum of Brittany (Q3329701)). for a start, maybe we should make it more know, better documented (mainly : what is the difference between depicts (P180) and main subject (P921), I vaguely remember a page - on Commons ? - about it and could only find back this Wikidata:WikiProject_Visual_arts/Item_structure#Depicted_subjects_and_iconography which is quite short...). Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 09:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence: depicts (P180) is everything you see in a painting (which can be a lot), main subject (P921) is (what the label says in English) the main subject, so one, maybe two.
What main subject (P921) is depends a bit per domain. For religious art see Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Christian religious art and Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Top religious art main subjects, compare that to Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Top religious art depicts. Multichill (talk) 22:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

How to add a painter?

I tried a few days ago to add a list for Adolphe Valette, Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator/Pierre Adolphe Valette, somehow expecting that a bot would come a fill it in. I am probably missing some step, but I do not know which one exactly. Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot @Multichill: Ymblanter (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
So I would need to manually created the Wikidata items for every painting I uploaded? Do not we have a bot doing this? Ymblanter (talk) 20:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: as you noticed I added the missing list part and created Self-Portrait (Q116153660) by hand. I generally import data per collection. That scales a lot better than doing it by hand.
Some people import from Commons, but in my experience that's a lot of work and the data is of not very good quality. Doable for specific sets, but not for very large ones. It's generally easier to just import from the source and match up the images (or just upload better quality newer images). Multichill (talk) 21:03, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
The collection is Q2638817 and is probably machine readable, but the problem is that very few images are uploaded on Commons, and indiscriminate upload is not a good idea because many are still not in PD. I am adding the structural data when I upload images, but I guess I am not using all fields I could, and I am not sure the bot would be able to read all the data from my uploads (w:File:Adolphe Valette Castlegate Salford.jpg would be an example). Ymblanter (talk) 21:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
That collection has a list here: Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Manchester Art Gallery because it is an ArtUK venue. In the past I have harvested some ArtUK venues to be able to make an import of paintings with basic metadata so that I could then afterwards upload images to Commons using the structured data from Wikidata. The metadata on Commons for painters is too messy to do it the other way around. Here's the link to the ArtUK record for the painting: castlegate-salford-206252 which could be added to an item with Art UK artwork ID (P1679). Hope it helps. Jane023 (talk) 14:57, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Jane, I will try. Ymblanter (talk) 17:35, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Most used painting properties

I updated Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Most used painting properties. This contains all non external-id property usage. More detailed also available, but that's not for all properties. Multichill (talk) 12:39, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Palissy database as an alternative to Joconde database

I always wondered why some French museums don't enter any items in the Joconde database, and I found the answer yesterday. Take the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse. Zero items on Joconde, but 188 on Palissy: [1]! In fact, the search for "painting" (tableau) alone returns 70,000 results on Palissy: [2], of which quite a number belong to public collections. Of course, there's a huge downside, which is that no inventory number is given. But apart from that, what a gold mine of data! Edelseider (talk) 11:18, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! If it's any consolation, the RKDiamages database is far from complete for Dutch museums and this is a much smaller country. Jane023 (talk) 13:24, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jane023: - I corrected the second link above, there was a copy-and-paste mistake! Cheers, --Edelseider (talk) 13:37, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I would search like this which returns 64154 paintings (or 58366 if you do exact search). We do already have about 18.000 paintings with Palissy ID (P481). Multichill (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Well spotted, Multichill. That leaves a lot of paintings to be mined! Base Joconde is updated monthly and some museums (for instance Besançon) have now put almost everything there - Wikidata is terribly lagging behind. But I have the feeling that some others museums will never touch that tool, for whatever reason. Maybe a lack of personel. --Edelseider (talk) 11:20, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
@Multichill: We actually have a bit more as some have a not too optimal modelling (even title is missed here). Palissy has too parts: items just inventoried (IM ids) and those granted some protection level through heritage designation (PM ids). Only for the latter has there been a mass upload back in 2017 (we're lagging since then) and the choice was made to base it on open data dump as source, for copyright safety, but it actually included only publicly held objects. Note that a large overlap is expected as all objects with a PM id should also have an IM id. On the other side some entries actually address more than one painting... So the actual number of real paintings is probably somewhere in-between.--Nono314 (talk) 15:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider: How is this an answer to why they do not contribute? :) The answer is probably more linked to each museum's policy (for example MBA Lyon used to have a lot in Joconde but now it's almost gone). Your finding is quite unexpected as both databases are supposed to be almost disjoint in their targets, but seems quite useful especially for smaller museums who have (almost) no presence online. I guess you'll be playing with this for some time! Note, about inventory numbers, for Musée des beaux-arts de Mulhouse (Q3330211) you can find them in the scanned 80s paperwork (top of second page) that is linked in the see also section --Nono314 (talk) 15:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
@Nono314: So, Lyon actually removed information from Joconde? What a disappointment - when did you notice that? --Edelseider (talk) 15:29, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
I noticed it when the pop.culture site launched (2019). I scraped the new site and compared to what I had scraped from the old mistral interface couple years earlier and found discrepancies, main one being Lyon nuked from ~1800 to a handful. I first thought it was just not moved to the new site, but double checking, I found it had also been removed from the old one. See, almost all existing links are dead. Nono314 (talk) 20:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Sad ! And also, difficult to understand. It almost looks like a case of anti-Paris resentment. --Edelseider (talk) 21:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider: I'm sorry what? Joconde and Palissy may sometimes by accident intersect but that's not much more than than, just an accident (just like Joconde and Mérimée or Mérimée and Palissy or etc. may intersect). It is still a good source for data import on Wikidata (a lot of data has already been imported, qv. supra, more could/should be imported). As for the main reason for (not) entering data in a database, 99% of the time it boils down to "not enough ressource: time, money, tool and/or people". Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 14:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Louvre paintings missing?

According to Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Property statistics we currently have 6.600 paintings in the Louvre. When I look at their website, it returns 10.000 paintings. It looks we're missing 3.400 paintings. @Shonagon, Nono314, Pyb:. Any idea why or was just never completed? I could add easily import the missing ones and expand what we have with more data and references. Multichill (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello Multichill,
Indeed we discussed this topic couple months ago, right after you had imported Musées Nationaux Récupération (Q19013512). The current Louvre Collections site went online less than 2 years ago. I think the bulk of the import was made quite earlier, when there was only Atlas (Q7585771) around, which focused mainly on artworks on display in the museum itself. And after that there were mainly (semi-)manual creations, based mostly on what was available on Joconde or commons.
I can definitively give a hand, as I already have some scraping code available and know about some specifics about how we handle it on wikidata (eg paying attention to locations). Nono314 (talk) 20:54, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Hello Multichill, Nono314, Pyb,
We were young. I was not working in the Louvre at this time.
The import was made by a scrapping of Joconde database, based on the location in the Louvre. Actually a large part of Louvre's paintings are not in the Louvre. They are in others museums or official buildings. The majority of the missing paintings are not in the Louvre storage. That's why the notion of long-term loan (Q94796160) is so important for this collection. The second issue is that data from Joconde were produced in the late 90s/early 00s and that there have been new paintings acquisitions and moves since.
Yes a complementary import could be done. In the lot there would be some long-term loans paintings already on Wikidata. 9 from the Musée des Augustins (Q2711480) were thus identified last week by Nono314 (example: The Calling of St. Matthew (Q55236582). For additional information about the data, there is a JSON version of the records; the documentation is here: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/page/documentationJSON . Note that many creators have a Wikidata ID in the JSON file: "creator": [{...."wikidata": "Q49987"}].
If a complementary import is made, there will surely be a need for additional contribution, especially for finding merges to do, adding locations and images. I would gladly contribute. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 22:45, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. I'll let you know when I start working on this. Multichill (talk) 10:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
Felt like working on the Louvre so made the bot to index the paintings. It's currently running on the existing paintings adding some missing data and references to existing data.
I'll have a look at the missing paintings next. Multichill (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
I noticed that combined works like Q29650155 have a whole list of inventory number (P217) and Louvre Museum ARK ID (P9394). Probably better to keep the existing item for the group and also create items for the individual paintings all linked together. That's also how we did it in other collections and makes the data more consistent. What do you think? @Shonagon: as main editor. Multichill (talk) 15:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
Related to that. The combination of collection and inventory number is used to identify a painting. So every painting should have an inventory number in Department of Paintings of the Louvre (Q3044768) and inventory numbers should only be used once. Currently finding some issues here:
Currently I'm only using the "Numéro principal". If that's missing, I'm just skipping the painting for now. Some paintings like https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010058749 only have a "Numéro dépositaire". Is it safe to fall back to that or will that contain collisions (duplicate inventory numbers)? Multichill (talk) 16:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
I was wondering why my bot didn't edit all existing paintings; It's because Joconde and Ark have different inventory numbers. See for example Mythological Allegory (Q19820109) with RF 1946-22 and RF 1946 22.
See https://w.wiki/66KY for a list of 1300+ paintings that probably have a different inventory number than what is listed in ARK. That's a lot of paintings to either check or merge.....
I'll have a bot retrieve the slightly different inventory numbers from ARK. Multichill (talk) 20:11, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
As you might have noticed, the bot is adding new items today. Multichill (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Just found out the bump in numbers on property dashboard this morning, and keeping up with latest events... Nice monday surprise :)
Inventory numbers are strings subject to formatting issues and can not be expected to be fully identical across sources. That was especially witnessed working on RKD_to_match/Louvre where there are even more variations. Why not stay safe with the external id when available like here?
Please do not use "Numéro dépositaire" as this would be the other museum's number (where the painting is actually located), with even more quirks involved. Looks like most paintings without Department of Paintings of the Louvre (Q3044768) numbers are just that: entries with only "Numéro dépositaire" listed (I can see also a few historical belongings, imported from RKDI, to what was then called Central Museum where Revolution's armies brought artworks they had collected).
Will be having a deeper look later. Nono314 (talk) 08:26, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
@Multichill: You actually couldn't refrain yourself from using "Numéro dépositaire", no matter how bad an idea it sounded, right? I found Adoration of the Magi (Q115676760) and The Saints Preserving the World from the Wrath of Christ (Q115675996) where you mixed up typical Lyon numbers with a Department of Paintings of the Louvre (Q3044768) collection, just to come up with bogus duplicates of Adoration of the Magi (Q4684623) and The Saints Preserving the World from the Wrath of Christ (Q19947675). I guess they're not the only ones...
There are even more problematic issues. As of now, and only from the few latest edits:
So quite a bit of work to find and fix all these, having to wait for bot fixes also so that they won't be reimported this way --Nono314 (talk) 12:22, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Looks like things did not go as expected with dimensions either (did something?). At least here we are on the lacking side, rather than plain wrong. We have height without width (!) as in Q115669672, apparently as a result of the bot trying to retrieve sizes by index instead of iterating, or just nothing as in Self portrait (Q115674807) as it didn't expect 3D. --Nono314 (talk) 23:02, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Bit busy and distracted by other things so I didn't get back here yet.
I'm pretty sure library sciences teaches you (like computer science (Q21198)) to keep your identifiers (inventory numbers) consistent and unique. And that's the case for the vast majority of collections. RKD is mostly based on hand written notes and I wouldn't reference that for an example of consistency. I'm no fan of specials or exceptions because it doesn't scale and always a source of issues, but looks like no other choice here than to switch to the ARK. I have to check the other things and I'll get back to you. Multichill (talk) 18:45, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for getting back on this. I'm pretty sure computer science (Q21198) also taught you the difference between data and format ;) Having consistent identifiers doesn't prevent different formatting, especially in different systems. Most museums started with hand-written inventories and it's not rare at all to see for example zero-padded numbers in digital collections, or optional spaces or dashes. What is more surprising is the absence of own numbers on some paintings, maybe User:Shonagon knows why?
Then you also seemed to make a number of assumptions (eg all paintings belonging to Department of Paintings of the Louvre (Q3044768)), which ended being wrongly sourced as "stated in". And, guess what, inventory numbers are only guaranteed to be unique within department, that's why those are used as collection. We offered to help with some specifics we had already experienced, that's for a reason.
I kept away from almost any fixes until now, for fear I would only make things worse in case the bot ran again. I will continue so until you confirm the status and what you can tweak on artdatabot. Nono314 (talk) 13:56, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Hello Nono314 The thing is that some objects registered in the collections do not have inventory number. We know that the use of inventory registers is old and the use of numbers came after. For some objects, that have not remained long in the Louvre and are on deposit since a while, there is no number yet. The ten-year collections review will be the opportunity to settle these cases and as result a collection reassignment or a number. The identification of the works is generally more complex than one would imagine, for many reasons (frequent changes of titles, bad attributions, missing works, not located, contradictory documents, duplicates, ...) and especially for a central collection. With the possibility of relying heavily on computer data, which is quite recent, it has progressed a lot in recent years. These cases encountered should be resolved in the coming years. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 20:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I started doing some improvements to correct my mistakes:

Multichill (talk) 19:46, 15 January 2023 (UTC)


Louvre current locations

I looked at the current locations for the paintings. If the painting is in some other museum, that is set as (preferred) location. If the painting is on display, the room is set as (preferred) location. So far so good.

  1. For location (P276) we have a mix of Louvre Palace (Q1075988) and Louvre Museum (Q19675), I would prefer to consolidate on Louvre Museum (Q19675) as this seems to cover it best.
  2. We also have in Painting's depot of the Musée du Louvre or in temporary movement (Q40091273) and Louvre storage (depot) (Q19059868). These items seem a bit out of place and also cause constraint violations. Most large museums (at least in the Netherlands) have the majority of their paintings not on display. Can we come up with a more general solution with qualifiers here? location (P276) -> Louvre Museum (Q19675) with qualifier object has role (P3831) museum storage (Q1191732)?
  3. Führermuseum (Q475667) and Munich Central Collecting Point (Q1053735) show up all over the place. Here the current location has to be set to preferred rank. See Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Provenance for more information.

Feedback would be nice. Multichill (talk) 16:34, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I would agree on a consolidation on Louvre Museum (Q19675), since the reserves are no more located in Louvre Palace (Q1075988) but now outside Paris, and "temporary movement" does not seem to me like something we can track. This, of course, provided there is no mention of a location elsewhere (see issues above). Some thoughts, Shonagon? Nono314 (talk) 12:35, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
As explained before, the majority of the missing paintings that have been added are not in the Louvre, neither in the museum storage (Q1191732). Without effective information on location, the statement location (P276) Louvre Museum (Q19675) / museum storage (Q1191732) is speculative and in large part wrong. The Department of Paintings of the Louvre as central collection dispatch many of the paintings in other places, museums, that are often indicated but not always, and official buildings, that are not indicated for security reasons. Some are in museum storage (Q1191732) but it is not possible, with the data exposed, to know which ones.
The use of the items Louvre storage (depot) (Q19059868), in Painting's depot of the Musée du Louvre or in temporary movement (Q40091273), in depot of the musée du Louvre or in temporary movement (Q40147970), that I created or museum storage (Q1191732) are indeed problematic for this collection, first because in almost all cases there is no data for such claims; I do not use for now. As Nono314 explain, the other issue is that the storage is not in Paris and the "temporary movement" could not be track for now (maybe later). The website collections.louvre.fr could not be a reference for such location (P276) statements. When there is "non exposé"(not on display) in a record, there is nothing in the data available about the location. It's the same for the country with geographic position in France.
The is an issue on the data quality and the statements about storage without a real reference about location should me removed, especially because we are doing now a precise, really referenced and updated contribution on the locations.
The claims about Führermuseum (Q475667),Munich Central Collecting Point (Q1053735) and Carinhall (Q222728) should have a end time (P582) qualifier. As you added those statements, could you be fix that Multichill? There is no information exposed by the Louvre for such claims.
By the way I recently made a major update on about 2500 items (and a check for several thousands) about the location for artworks of Louvre's collections, not only paintings, based on the actually exposed data. It is a complex and time consuming activity (and volunteer I specify, doing it on my free time). This is worthwhile because it provides very usefull and accurate data for reuse and support for other Wikimedia projects. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 08:12, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
My reasoning was that all the paintings must have been in the Louvre at some point in time before they got spread around again so location (P276) Louvre Museum (Q19675) is correct, just not the current value. These paintings must have at least passed through the Louvre, right?
Dates for previous collections can sometimes be found in the other links. I can probably copy some of the collection qualifiers to the location, but most of it will be manual work. Completing provenance is a lot of work. Multichill (talk) 18:23, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
No. These works are not necessarily passed through the Louvre. One example : cl010053452. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 14:12, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Sure? cl010053452 has "musée Napoléon III, Paris, 1862" in the provenance which was part of the Louvre. Multichill (talk) 17:46, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Yes sure. The musée Napoléon III was located in the Palais de l'Industrie (another palace destroyed in 1896) and was not a part of the Louvre neither physically nor legally. Artworks from the Campana collection were first attached to this museum, officially called "Musée Campana" (see Collection Campana, entre le musée Napoléon-III et le musée du Louvre). When this museum was closed, artworks were attached to the Louvre's collections; many artworks went to the Louvre and many were dispatched in other museums. Let's not miss the point. Not all artworks of the Louvre's collections had been physically in the Louvre (another example: cl010213684) and today a lot are not in, neither in Louvre museum storages. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 23:54, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
@Shonagon: from these these 1775 paintings I removed the location from the ones from all paintings newer than Q115662171. The earlier ones are a bit trickier because it contains cases where my bot just added the reference. Could use a hand with these. Multichill (talk) 13:32, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello Multichill Editing locations and long-term loans for Louvre's collections items is on my to-do list for the next few weeks. The locations for paintings on display in Louvre has been done a few weeks ago. Yes it's bit complex, with many cases, but I would do it with pleasure, especially as this data will be reused. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 09:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello Multichill, Nono314, Pyb. Major update has been done on long-term loans and localisations for the Louvre collections items. There are now about 3750 long-term loans and I made a external map on this: http://zone47.com/crotos/gudea/callisto/?m=3 .
For the localisation, if an atwork is on long-term and has no authority data on localisation (i.e. "non exposé"/"not on display"), nothing is set because there may be a sub long-term loan. For examples, a museum which has a long-term loan can deposit an artwork in another museum of the same city (such cases are frequent). When there is no long-term loan and no localisation data, in Painting's depot of the Musée du Louvre or in temporary movement (Q40091273), in depot of the musée du Louvre or in temporary movement (Q40147970), Louvre Palace (Q1075988), Louvre Museum (Q19675) which were problematic (and that I used a lot), are no more used. Instead Louvre storage (depot) (Q19059868) is used; it corresponds to the fact that a large part of the storage is not in the Louvre. For the artworks of Department of Prints and Drawings of the Louvre (Q3044753), a more precise localisation is now made because precise storages are published on records.
Now, following the recent massive paintings upload, there are still many duplicates to find with long-term loans and images to add. It is not an easy task, because there is very often no matches with titles and numbers. It will take some time; I started the task and will stay on it for the next weeks. Thanks for the upload. It is not an easy data set but we manage and a lot has been already done with the pleasure of seeing all this enrichment. Best regards. --Shonagon (talk) 07:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Shonagon, thanks for the great work! I started taking part in the duplicate hunt, beginning with Versailles and Lyon, also adding several images to the latter. I will probably also continue from time to time. The drawback of the "depot" attribute is that the corresponding collection does not blend nicely with its non-attributed counterpart after merge. Maybe some large scale fix could also be done on inv number that were mis-assigned to Louvre (those indicated as "numéro dépositaire" in the metadata). Cheers -- Nono314 (talk) 22:32, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
@Shonagon: thanks for your work. I'm a bit puzzled by your edits on The Astronomer (Q544315). You removed the location (P276) statement say it was in the Louvre. Why? It used to be next to the The Lacemaker (Q1216387) which seems to be in Room 837 (Q19018819). Multichill (talk) 21:02, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Multichill L'Astronome (Q544315) has left the Louvre for Louvre Abu Dhabi(Q3176133) for a 2 years(?) loan. That's why it is not in Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum :(. It would be better for next updates to add end time (P582) instead of removing the room locations. There is no really permanent locations; it changed rooms some few years ago. In other hand we have an updated data on Wikidata about locations, which is a usefull information. Best regards Shonagon (talk) 21:30, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Paintings of the Museum of Brittany

Hi,

Just a quick message to let you know that I imported - with OpenRefine - all the 215 missing paintings from the Museum of Brittany (Q3329701) (there was only 2 before) see the list on https://w.wiki/68Zs.

I am aware that there is still some little problems (data missing, even strange/wrong data sometimes, maybe also other problems I didn't spot yet, feel free to point them to me) but I preferred to do the import first (and before the end of the year), I'll correct these "details" manually afterward (and I'll also import some of the photos on Commons ; then I'll focus again on the others objects of this museum).

Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Yo, @VIGNERON en résidence: now look here – Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Musée de Bretagne. Cheers, Edelseider (talk) 12:37, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks (I removed Joconde and AGORHA, since none of these paintings are in these database). Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 12:55, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Some of these (rather obscure) painters immediatley crept into Top creators by number of paintings (France), LOL. --Edelseider (talk) 13:39, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence: you did the disambiguation in the label, not in the description, see Help:Label#Disambiguation_information_belongs_in_the_description.
Why is the description for every painting "painting stored in the Brittany Museum"? I'm sure you can do better than that.
I assume the collection website is at http://www.collections.musee-bretagne.fr ? You should add links to it and use it for references.
I wouldn't add country (P17) to paintings because it's quite useless and unclear what the relation with the country is. Multichill (talk) 22:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Multichill: thanks a lot for these very useful feedbacks.
For the disambiguation, it was on purpose and per Wikidata:WikiProject_Visual_arts/Item_structure#Titles_and_labels, since most of these paintings don't have a title.
For the description, I put it as a placeholder and I'm open to any suggestion. I could add the "rather obscure" author (when it is known) but beside that, not sure what would be good. Is it a good idea and would it be enough, do you see anything else?
Actually the reference is an internal file with more data than the public portal http://www.collections.musee-bretagne.fr (when it is, I'll add Museum of Brittany collections ID (P4313) be I have to work backward afterward so it will take a bit of time, it should be fixe soon). When it comes from the portal, should I repeat it for every statements?
country (P17) is absolutely necessery, we already talked about that ;) in France, (most) museum objects are under directly the sovereignty to the state (and not the museum itself), it is an important data.
Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 08:35, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence: I think that most art historians are not familiar with the work of Joseph Oberthur and Simone Le Moigne - even their names are probably unfamiliar to most scholarly trained art historians. Of course, this doesn't mean that they are bad painters, but the qualification "rather obscure" is quite fitting, globally speaking. You could say the same about many painters in the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse, it's nothing personal or against Britanny! --Edelseider (talk) 09:50, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider: no offense taken, I'm just wondering if it's really useful to put them (and some even more obscure one) in the description and/or if something else is advisable. Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 09:53, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence: It is absolutely useful IMO because that's precisely how we get them out of obscurity! Cordialement, Edelseider (talk) 10:03, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider, Multichill: FYI, name of the author added in the description (in French, English and creation of description in Breton). Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 12:44, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence: I don't like the "stored in the Brittany Museum" in the description of every painting. It's superfluous and it feels a bit like you're trying to promote the museum. It sure is completely not in line with the 600.000+ other painting items we have here on Wikidata. Can you update the description? Multichill (talk) 18:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@Multichill: ✓ Done, is it ok now? (I also tried to add a description in German, Spanish and Italian). Is there any hint anywhere of what is a good "description"? (ideally in multiple languages) PS: I see that a lot of other paintings with the museum in description (qv. [3] ; and it's seems to be the usual practice for non-painting objects). Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 09:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Lucas Cranach

The Cranach Digital Archive indexes all paintings related to Lucas Cranach. We have Cranach Digital Archive artwork ID (P5783) for it here. I updated these lists to link to it:

Still quite a few missing a link (constraint report). Who wants to help? Multichill (talk) 18:21, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I created Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Cranach Digital Archive artwork to match to make it easier to match with https://lucascranach.org/en/search/?kind=PAINTING . You can just filter by country, city or collection. Already matched a lot of them. Would be nice to have some help. I plan to import the remaining paintings when enough matches have been made. Multichill (talk) 23:05, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
I did a lot of matches and imported all the other paintings. I added genre (P136) to all of the paintings and added main subject (P921) & depicts (P180) to quite a lot of them.
Next up is adding creator (P170), for that I made Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Creator/Lucas Cranach (to sort out). Multichill (talk) 22:41, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Also plenty of images (1400+) at https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=23986329 that still need to be linked with Wikidata items. Multichill (talk) 21:26, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Severely outdated list

Top countries by number of paintings in collections cannot be updated because it was killed by OS for overloading memory (it's time to sentence OS to death for its numerous crimes). That list should be reflecting the uncounted thousands of new additions of the last months, but it doesn't. Could someone please fix it? Edelseider (talk) 09:51, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@Edelseider: strange, the query works in the query service, it should work on Listeria too...
Meanwhile, I cut the query to "only country with more than 1000 paintings" and it works again.
Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you so much, VIGNERON! --Edelseider (talk) 14:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
I started Topic:W795pi3msyletjnh two years ago, but never got a reply. It happens to a lot of lists. Multichill (talk) 20:43, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Multichill: yes, it happens to a lot of lists, and it is infuriating. However, that specific list is basically the mother of all the others. It's more complete than Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Property statistics. All the best, --Edelseider (talk) 20:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Italy ridiculously low

Italy is currently listed as having less than 5,000 paintings on its entire territory. Who among us doesn't know that in Florence alone, you find at least three times that number, spread over the museums, the churches, the chapels, and the palaces? Sailko, il tuo lavoro è necessario qui. L'Italia è sottorappresentata! --Edelseider (talk) 14:32, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I provide pictures.. providing also Wikidata entries is too much for me ;) But I recently sorted my images by work of art represented, here, it helped some users to improve templates and wikidata stuff. --Sailko (talk) 15:22, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider: lack of data is the main problem. I never discovered any good sources of data for Italy. Italy is a digital desert. Multichill (talk) 20:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Edelseider: I just discovered catalogo.beniculturali.it . Search for paintings returns 390.517 (!) hits. Interesting data. Multichill (talk) 18:46, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
@Multichill: Wow! --Edelseider (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Also for Florence area I use this. For catholic church properties Beweb is a commonly used website, even with its limits. --Sailko (talk) 20:08, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The Palace Museum import

I was looking at the statistics and looks like User:Stevenliuyi imported 50.000+ paintings from the The Palace Museum (Q2047427). Happy to see a large import of paintings that are not in the European tradition! No trial run was done, but I think some fixes need to be applied:

Multichill (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'm still working on it, especially uploading those with public domain images to Commons and linking to the items here using image (P18). There are also data for "level of cultural relics", which I guess could be imported using heritage designation (P1435). Regarding the above-mentioned fixes, I'll gladly make the necessary changes once a consensus has been reached on how to model Chinese paintings, which may need some more consideration to conform to the model primarily used for Western paintings. For instance, traditional Chinese paintings can be divided into two board categories, ink wash painting (Q756712) and ink and color painting (Q116457653). Perhaps using made from material (P186) instead of genre (P136) would be better, but I'm not sure the best way to incorporate the information into made from material (P186).--Stevenliuyi (talk) 19:57, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@Stevenliuyi: did you find Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure? It's the most useful page when it comes to modelling art. I agree we don't want to shoehorn these paintings in.
For art we have the process of making it (art of painting (Q11629)) and the object produced by it (painting (Q3305213)). That usually requires a bit of modeling the untangle the two. fabrication method (P2079) can be used to indicate what technique was used. movement (P135) is also interesting to add if that is documented. Let's see if we can come up with a suitable model together. Multichill (talk) 18:47, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for all the information. I'll first add retrieved (P813) to the references since I don't think that needs further discussion.
BTW, I'm preparing for adding statements like for the paintings. I find that country (P17) is required for items with heritage designation (P1435). I can of course add that, but I've noticed that many painting items do not have country (P17) statements and Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structure doesn't mention it either. So I'm just curious if that's done on purpose? --Stevenliuyi (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
That's because "heritage designation (P1435): heritage designation of a cultural or natural site" is for sites like Grote Kerk (Q1545193) or Taj Mahal (Q9141) and not really intended for objects so that's probably not really the right property to use. Multichill (talk) 11:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Do you have any suggestions for a more appropriate property to use? I did notice that heritage designation (P1435) is for "cultural or natural sites", but I couldn't find any other properties that seemed more suitable. That's why I picked heritage designation (P1435), as it has been used in painting items like Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Q714802) and it seems that works of art are also considered to be en:cultural heritage.--Stevenliuyi (talk) 23:55, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
To the points raisded by Multichill in the original inquiry:
In our Wikidata:WikiProject_PCC_Wikidata_Pilot/Smithsonian_Libraries/Projects/Chinese_Portraits (CAPP), we followed a similar trend of practices with some variations. Our guidance relies on recording the statements based on published authoritative database for East Asian, namely Chinese, paintings and existing Wikidata practices as we came across throughout the Wikidata:WikiProject_PCC_Wikidata_Pilot period (Sep 2020 to Aug 2021). In our experience, many descriptions applied to Western paintings were either insufficient or somewhat inappropriate for East Asian works, especially the Chinese portrait paintings. Though, we have listed selective properties for our paintings project, we have not always succeeded in applying consistently across the project as they were not core.
Below are some examples that maybe relevant: A Breath of Spring (Q18689538), Hongtaiji, Emperor Taizong (1592–1643), Meditating with a Buddhist Rosary (Q108297320), Portrait of Daisan (Q107650956), Portrait of an Imperial Lady (Q110463580)
  • The Chinese ancestor portrait is a distinct style of painting. Though such Q item "ancestor portrait" is absent, another item describing the type of painting is available, portrait (Q134307) which our team opted to use for genre (P136). In hindsight, we could have created an item for the "ancestor portrait"
At times, the Chinese style of paintings, though some interprets as <genre>, also encompasses painting technique. For example, shui-mo or shuimo (ink wash or ink and wash), in early periods usually only ink (black). There are also Portrait or Figure painting, Landscape painting and Bird-and-Flower painting. The other things we know about are “styles” or “schools of painting; ie. "Literati painting," "Throw Ink," or “Written Idea” freehand style be called shuimo, xieyi) see WP article.
  • We have used the property country of origin (P495) to express period of the dynasty when a specific date cannot be ascertained, ie, Portrait of Daisan (Q107650956). Property of time period (P2348) was opted for items with no definitive reference in any of the published authoritative sources. Since the collection curators have already identified the group paintings were from Qing period, we use that property, time period (P2348), to narrow the timeline in order to facilitate query output. Another property we have chosen to incorporate, owned by (P127) (showing once upon a time ownership), ie, A Breath of Spring (Q18689538). This allowed us to bring together the collection we hope to highlight.
  • We have also chosen the property made from material (P186) to describe the characteristics of painting materials that the artist used
  • As for theme of the painting, we have chosen the property depicts (P180) to convey what the painting was about, the sitter, flowers, birds, rosary, etc.
Hope our experience helped somewhat? Thank you.
jshieh (talk) 20:47, 13 February 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the CAPP team

ListeriaBot again

Did anyone notice that, for a few days, LB went into overdrive and updated everything every 24 hours or fewer? Well, now it even fails to log in. If you request a manual update, you get the message: "ERROR: Login failed". This tool drives me crazy! Edelseider (talk) 19:24, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Multichill: @Jarekt: @Hannolans: SOAP must stop relying on ListeriaBot. That tool is only good for nasty surprises. The creator is "investigating", so far without any results. Is there an alternative to create and maintain lists? --Edelseider (talk) 08:16, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Edelseider I do rely on ListeriaBot a lot. For fast and dirty list it is great; however it does have many things it does not do correctly, like for example displaying or sorting based on nontrivial dates. One alternative I use is to write custom lua code to display each work (I cobbled together c:Module:User:Jarekt/table row to display information in Polish), and use SPARQL query to get a sorted list of artworks to show. Then I use a spreadsheet to add display template (with or without "subst:") to each artwork Q-code. It is a bit more manual work and not as convenient, but I do have full control over the results and can create tables ready to be added to articles, like in pl:Lista dzieł malarskich Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza. --Jarekt (talk) 12:30, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
@Jarekt: Thank you for the input. Your Witkiewicz list is admirable. He's a great artist, for sure! --Edelseider (talk) 13:29, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Note you can always pick out the query in the "Select" statement from your listeria list and dump that Sparql query into the Wikidata query service for updating your list of items. The query service doesn't include many of the features of listeria, but it at least provides basic feedback if an item is or is not in a list. I use that when listeria goes down, in combination with the good old "What links here" button (Special:WhatLinksHere). Jane023 (talk) 10:46, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Long-term loan

Hi,

Thanks to Shonagon I'm discovering just now long-term loan (Q94796160). This is very useful but is it the "official" model?

I see that for ~4k items (which is quite low) it's done this way:

But I found a few :

I also found one :

And there is maybe other ways I didn't found.

For the record, we have a lot of loan here at the Museum of Brittany (Q3329701), I see that we already have ~300 items on Wikidata about objects where I could add this data (in France it's quite easy to find them as the data is already implicitely stored in the inventory number (P217), inventory number for loans has to start with a D).

Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 08:44, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello VIGNERON en résidence. Indeed it's often easy for French museums to guess with the number that an artwork is on long-term loan. Unfortunatly the collection which holds it is not always mentionned. For wikidata edits, imho, the model of
⟨ subject ⟩ collection (P195) View with SQID ⟨ said collection ⟩
subject has role (P2868) View with SQID ⟨ long-term loan (Q94796160)  View with Reasonator View with SQID ⟩
is a good one. With more than 4000 claims, even if it could be considered as quite low, it's already a practice of edition. Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 23:50, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Shonagon. Done for Museum of Brittany (Q3329701) (with a SPARQL query to find all objects in the Museum of Brittany (Q3329701) with a number starting with D, then edited them with OpenRefine). Cdlt, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 15:58, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@VIGNERON en résidence, Shonagon: loans modeling needs some attention. We have the concept of a "loan" and the concept of a "long-term loan", but the distinction is currently unclear.
A loan or long term loan when used as qualifier subject has role (P2868) to collection (P195) should be an instance of legal status (Q2628882) and not legal act (Q1864008). This is similar to art of painting (Q11629) & painting (Q3305213).
@VIGNERON en résidence @Multichill @Jane023 The distinction between "loan" and "long-term loan" is very clear for museum professionals for whom these are common practices. In French there is 2 two differents words for these 2 different things: "prêt" for "loan", and "dépôt" for "long-term loan". One of the big differences for long-term loan is that the loaned object becomes a part of the borrower’s collection for the time of the loan. That's why we have to use in Wikidata the collection (P195) for both collections, lender and borrower, and to qualify the long-term loan. The responsibility for preservation is shared with the lender, even if the work is on long-term loan for decades. For a example if a painting is on "long-term loan" in an another museum or in a church (common cases), the museum to whose collection the work belongs, ensures regularly that the work remains in good condition, continue to document the work and manages legal provisions such as inventory registration.
A "long-term loan" long-term loan (Q94796160) is used in cultural heritage domain. This is different with "commodat" commodate (Q1580844) which is used in production world with a notion of actual use. Those two pratices have two diffrents types of contracts. In France, they each have their own legal texts, cultural heritage Code/Code du patrimoine (Q2981553) for long-term loan (Q94796160) and French civil Code/Civil Code of the French (Q151060) for commodate (Q1580844). Best regards --Shonagon
@Shonagon: your response seems to be very specific to France and French museum professionals. commodate (Q1580844) / nl:Bruikleen is the term used in the Netherlands.
See for example https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/SK-C-5: "Bruikleen van de gemeente Amsterdam / bruikleen 1808" (you know this one). No mention of long-term anywhere.
I'm trying to get to a system that works in multiple countries. We might have to break up the concept in smaller related parts.
BTW, ping only works if you sign your message. Multichill (talk) 19:19, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Distintion between loan and long-term loans is not specific to France. The Long-term Loans and Collection Research Working Group 2008–2010, a subgroup of the European Open Method of Coordination Working Group on Mobility of Collections made a Long-term loans best practices report (pdf) in which there is clear distinction between short loan and long-term loans: Long-term loan practices differ from those of short-term loans in many respects. The most noteworthy difference is that objects on long-term loan are meant to contribute to the borrower’s permanent collection and are regarded as forming part of the collection for the period of the loan. Objects on long-term loan are thus treated with the same care, use and attention as all objects in the borrower’s collection. A more precise description of the differences between long-term and short-term loans is attached to this report as Appendix A . There was no French people in this working group, but museum professionals from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Romania.
For example, on the collection website of National Museum in Warsaw (Q153306), there is record with the qualification of "long term loan" https://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl/en/catalog/605980 for an canopic jar in collection of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre (Q3044749) https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010004821 .
The practice of giving a unique loan number noted down in the Register only for long-term loans is indicated in CIDOC Fact Sheet No. 1 (pdf), published by ICOM. Thus we can find loan ID on this British Museum record https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_Loan-78 for a frize lent by the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre (Q3044751) https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010360702 Best regards --Shonagon (talk) 03:50, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Would me nice to get this sorted out. Plenty of loans that are currently not documented as being a loan. @Jane023: didn't we have a conversation about this before? Multichill (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
hm yes, I forgot about this. I guess it would be nice to have the same method for short or long term loans. In the Netherlands some long-term loans are a few years but others can be decades. I recall wanting an item for a loan object - should these be long-term loan as soon as the loan is longer than for an exhibition? Jane023 (talk) 19:33, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
I ran into commodate (Q1580844). That was the one I was looking for. Multichill (talk) 21:33, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Also found lease agreement (Q1815101). Multichill (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Sorry forgot again about this. Yes I noticed that there were a few different properties for loans of sportsplayers. Some art loans outlast the expected human life term though. It was after poking around those contractual agreements that it occurred to me we should do something about those. Very common (see Vermeer case ongoing) is short-term loan exchange where certain works get traded for others (think Brad Pitt in Moneyball juggling players around the league to control his team manager). It would be nice to have "art loan" the way we also have "art theft" but instead of a significant event, some sort of collection-related qualifier. Jane023 (talk) 07:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Interestingly in Polish museums long-term loans are called "deposits" (pl: "depozyt"), like for example long-term loan of Jan Leszczyński art collection to National Museum in Kraków (Q116259175), where private individuals would deposit valuable artworks in a museum for decades. They do have inventory number, but the "collection" qualifier can be confusing. I wonder if other countries have similar arrangements. --Jarekt (talk) 16:33, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate: Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy

These should be merged:

Edelseider (talk) 07:43, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Done - note these are not items, but pages, so you can just make a redirect like any Wikipedia page (not sure if you are active on Wikipedia or not, but for future reference for anyone else). For common names of collections in and out of the host country, it's probably worthwhile making sure that that if there's ãt least one list article, a redirect in either the host country language or English would be useful to have in the Wikidata lists. Jane023 (talk) 10:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, Jane! Sorry for reacting so late. Edelseider (talk) 18:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
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