A Heritage Digital Twin ontology-based description of Giovanni Baronzio's “Crucifixion of Christ” analytical investigation

Abstract

The methodologies of Cultural Heritage research and in particular those related to conservation and the analytical study of heritage assets and works of art, recently grouped under the term Heritage Sciences, engage a broad range of disciplines, each with its own characteristic workflows for generating data. Consequently, an emerging challenge is the need to define a digital framework for multi-source data integration, associated with a single heritage asset, but generated by various tools and methods which are often pursued by different research groups and at different times. This digital framework is discussed in this essay as the digital twin of a heritage asset, comprising of the documentation data associated with a heritage asset and its virtual representation. To best describe and define a Heritage Digital Twin ontology and its associated knowledge graph, we use a specific example drawing from art historical and analytical investigation of a 13th century Italian painting masterpiece, the Crucifixion of Christ, by Giovanni Baronzio, one of the leaders of the so-called Rimini School of painting which was greatly influenced by the work of the famous Renaissance master Giotto di Bondone.