Mining Authoritativeness
in Art History A crawler of artwork attributions

mAuth is a tool for art historians, data collection managers, and curious, who want to collect information - historians' opinions, motivations, bibliographic references, and images - about artwork attributions related to artworks of the Modern Art (15-16th centuries).


WHAT - mAuth is a semantic crawler designed for harvesting information on artwork attributions in the web of data. mAuth API is implemented in Python, using Flask microframework.

WHY - mAuth is a proof of concept. The aim is leveraging Semantic Web technologies to (a) support historians' daily tasks (such as retrieving information and sources), (b) evaluate the methodology underpinning decisions made by art historical data providers, and (c) investigate how authoritativeness can be automatically interpreted given a set of rules and believes shared in a community.

HOW - Attributions are sorted so as to immediately highlight the most well-documented, updated, and authoritative ones. The ranking is based on common requirements in the art historical methodology - information providers' reputation, timeliness of the attribution, completeness of motivations and cited sources, and relevance of information.

LIMITS - Attributions are extracted from secondary sources (e.g. cataloguing records, online web pages), hence the goodness of the attribution itself is not evaluated. Data sources currently harvested include art historical photo archives, such as the Federico Zeri Foundation (University of Bologna), the Berenson Library, Villa I Tatti (Univeristy of Harvard), and the Frick Art Reference Library of New York; multipurposes datasets, such as Wikidata, DBpedia, and VIAF; and libraries, such as BNF, LOC, DBN. More data sources will be (hopefully!) added soon.

See Source code and API documentation

4 attributions found.

Peruzzi Baldassarre

22.27

Zeri Foundation (University of Bologna) accepted attribution
1

artwork title: Peruzzi Baldassarre , Tre Grazie
date(s) of attribution: 1990;
criteria: bibliography; archival classification; scholar's attribution;
source of attribution: F. Zeri ( h index: 40.0; acceptance rating: 16% );
bibliography: bibliografia di confronto Freedberg S.J. Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence 1961 vol. I, p. 135; vol. II, p. 182;
bibliografia specifica Berenson B. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance 1932 441;
bibliografia specifica Morelli G. Della Pittura italiana: studii storico-critici ; le Gallerie Borghese e Doria-Pamphili in Roma 1991 144;
bibliografia specifica Frommel C.L. Die Farnesina und Peruzzis architektonisches Frhwerk : mit 18 Tafeln und 29 Textabbildungen 1961 59, n. 14;
bibliografia specifica Venturi A. Storia dell'Arte Italiana 1901-1940 vol. IX, 5, p. 412;
bibliografia specifica Frizzoni G. Il Buonarroti Delle pitture di Baldassarre Peruzzi e del giudizio portatone dal sig. Cavalcaselle 1869 35;
bibliografia specifica Berenson B. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance - Central Italian and North Italian Schools 1968 vol. I, p. 334;
bibliografia specifica Berenson B. Pitture italiane del Rinascimento 1936 379;

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Peruzzi, Baldassare (1481-1536, Italian) artist

10.24

I Tatti - Berenson Library (University of Harvard) accepted attribution
1

artwork title: Three Graces (fragment)
date(s) of attribution: 1968;
criteria: archival creator's bibliography;
source of attribution: Bernard Berenson, ( h index: 33.0; acceptance rating: 3% );

Italian School (16th century), 16th C, attributed to. Italian School (16th century), 16th C, attributed to. Italian School (16th century), 16th C., attributed to.

8.22

Frick Art Reference Library (NY) accepted attribution
0

artwork title: The Three Graces.
date(s) of attribution: 1952;
criteria: archival classification;
source of attribution: none;

Luini Bernardino scuola

4.27

Zeri Foundation (University of Bologna) discarded attribution (1)
0

artwork title: Peruzzi Baldassarre , Tre Grazie
date(s) of attribution: 1994;
criteria: auction attribution;
source of attribution: Asta Christie's ( h index: 5.0; acceptance rating: 0% );

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mAuth accepts URLs from the online Zeri Catalogue, in particular of artworks belonging to the Modern Art. Copy and paste the URL of a catalogue record in the text area and click Go! See for instance, The Three Graces

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