Iconclass

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The Threatened Swan ,c. 1650, Jan Asselijn, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Classed as: 45A10 = 'symbols, allegories of war; 'Guerra' (Ripa)' 25F36(SWAN) = 'water-birds' 34B11 = 'dog' 41C642 = 'eggs, egg-dishes' De bedreigde zwaan Rijksmuseum SK-A-4.jpeg
The Threatened Swan ,c. 1650, Jan Asselijn, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Classed as:
45A10 = 'symbols, allegories of war; 'Guerra' (Ripa)'
25F36(SWAN) = 'water-birds'
34B11 = 'dog'
41C642 = 'eggs, egg-dishes'

Iconclass is a specialized library classification designed for classifying the subjects and content of images in art (their iconography). It was originally conceived by the Dutch art historian Henri van de Waal in the 1970s, and was further developed by a group of scholars after his death.

Contents

It is one of the largest classification systems for cultural content and probably the largest for visual arts content. Initially designed for historical imagery, it is now also used to create subject access to texts and to classify a wide range of images, including modern photography. At the moment it contains over 28,000 unique concepts (classification types) and has an entry vocabulary of 14,000 keywords. Like the Dewey Decimal Classification and Universal Decimal Classification systems, it has 10 main "divisions" or points of entry:

Each division has 9 or 10 subdivisions, and so on. It can be consulted with the help of the freely available Iconclass 2100 browser. Iconclass was developed in the Netherlands as a standard classification for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that will allow the retrieval of images featuring particular details, subjects or other common factors. It was developed in the 1970s and was loosely based on the Dewey Decimal System because it was meant to be used in art library card catalogs.

The content of Iconclass is maintained by the Henri van de Waal Foundation.

Usage in data records

The iconclass code represents a concept and objects can be assigned a code indicating that the object depicts that concept. For example, the iconclass code "71H7131" is for the subject of "Bathsheba (alone) with David's letter". The code is built from "7" for bible, "71" for "Old Testament", "71H" the "story of David", "71H7" for "David and Bathsheba", "71H71" for "David observing Bathsheba bathing", "71H713" for "Bathsheba receiving a letter from David" [1] and "71H7131" for "Bathsheba alone with David's letter" [2]

Depicting the iconclass concept

To see all images in the RKDimages database that depict "Bathsheba receiving a letter from David", the associated iconclass code 71H713 can be used as a special search term. [3] On selecting one of these paintings and viewing its record in RKDimages, the code 71H713 can be seen under two sections; under the section for "subject" and under the section for "suggested searches". [4]

More examples

ImageIconclass-code with title
Workshop of Lucas van Leyden 001.jpg
St. Jerome in the Desert, c. 1520, workshop of Lucas van Leyden, Gemäldegalerie Berlin 11H(JEROME)36 = 'St. Jerome as penitent in the desert, half naked, kneeling before a crucifix and holding a stone in his hand to beat his breast; a skull (and other 'Vanitas' symbols), sometimes a scorpion and a snake beside him'
Johannes Vermeer - Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman, 'The Music Lesson' - Google Art Project.jpg
The Music Lesson , c. 1662–1664, by Johannes Vermeer, Royal Collection

48C7211 = 'musician training pupils, music-lesson'
48C7523 = 'one person playing keyboard instrument'
48C7331 = 'spinet, virginal'
48C7315(VIOLA DA GAMBA) = 'viola da gamba (sizes: pardessus de viole, treble, alto, tenor, bass, and contrabass (violone))'

Rivierlandschap Rijksmuseum SK-A-1970.jpeg
River Landscape, c. 1640, by Pieter Jansz. van Asch, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam25H2 = 'landscapes with waters, waterscapes, seascapes (in the temperate zone)'
Gustave Caillebotte - The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers.JPG
The Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers, 1884, by Gustave Caillebotte, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne

25H16 = 'plain'
61D(GENNEVILLIERS) = 'geographical names of countries, regions, mountains, rivers, etc.'

The iconclass concept as a subject

Everyone with an account can add to the iconclass hierarchy. Some of these hierarchies are quite detailed, such as for stories of the Old Testament that were popular in the arts during the 17th-century. The problems of using iconclass codes for concepts is that they are a bit too precise. In the previous search example for 71H713 in the RKDimages database, the painting record for Rembrandt's Bathsheba in the Louvre was excluded from the search, because the iconclass code assigned to that painting in the RKDimages database is not 71H713, but 71H7131, and searching for that code will result in other images to be returned. [5]

Usage by organizations

A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old master print, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the German Marburger Index. These can be matched to each other through the iconclass "hierarchy of somethings" to the current classification structure of the holder's collection. Completed iconclass projects are available, often online, but also published on DVD. [6] [7] Ideally however, iconclass coding is never finished, as it is also possible to keep adding codes to the system to identify more concepts. The system can also be used outside pure art history, though it is most often used in museum websites.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Universal Decimal Classification</span> Bibliographic and library classification system

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a bibliographic and library classification representing the systematic arrangement of all branches of human knowledge organized as a coherent system in which knowledge fields are related and inter-linked. The UDC is an analytico-synthetic and faceted classification system featuring detailed vocabulary and syntax that enables powerful content indexing and information retrieval in large collections. Since 1991, the UDC has been owned and managed by the UDC Consortium, a non-profit international association of publishers with headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Information science</span> Academic field concerned with collection and analysis of information

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of library and information science</span>

This page is a glossary of library and information science.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content-based image retrieval</span> Method of image retrieval

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medical Subject Headings</span> Controlled vocabulary

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netherlands Institute for Art History</span> Dutch national library of art history and holder of Dutch art history thesaurus

The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD, previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times. All of this is open to the public, and much of it has been digitized and is available on their website. The main goal of the bureau is to collect, categorize, and make art research available, most notably in the field of Dutch Masters.

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  1. Its main classes are not based on disciplines but on nine live stages of development, so-called ontical levels.
  2. It breaks them roughly down into hierarchical steps by further nine categories which makes decimal number coding possible.
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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri van de Waal</span>

Henri (Hans) van de Waal was a Dutch writer and art historian known for developing Iconclass.

Uniterm is a subject indexing system introduced by Mortimer Taube in 1951. The name is a contraction of "unit" and "term", referring to its use of single words as the basis of the index, the "uniterms". Taube referred to the overall concept as "Coordinate Indexing", but today the entire concept is generally referred to as Uniterm as well.

References

  1. ↑ "Iconclass 71H713". www.iconclass.org. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  2. ↑ "Iconclass 71H7131". www.iconclass.org. Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie / Netherlands Institute for Art History. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  3. ↑ All available records for iconclass code "71H713" in RKDimages
  4. ↑ Example for record 28726 for Pieter Paul Rubens version of Bathsheba receiving David's Letter ( 2 Samuel 11: 1-27), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, c. 1635
  5. ↑ All available records for iconclass code "71H7131" in RKDimages
  6. ↑ Iconclass website
  7. ↑ Ross Publishing – examples for sale Archived 2008-02-20 at the Wayback Machine

See also www.foleorpublishers.com. See also R. van Straten, Iconography – Indexing – ICONCLASS. A Handbook, Leiden 1994.

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