LiberIC: Iconography and iconology knowledge organization in book representations in Painting

Abstract

This study introduces the preliminary design of LiberIC, which is a description and cataloging tool that collects, controls, contextualizes, classifies, and grants access to representations of books in painting. We worked with a research sample consisting of two thousand paintings via the application of an exploratory and descriptive methodology. Through direct observation of these art pieces, we detected characteristics and particularities that could provide meaning to the pictorial representations of books in them. The collected data was then organized into major categories of information. Taking the principles of description and organization of knowledge as a starting point, and according to the formal style of other widely consolidated international cataloging rules, these categories were, henceforth, refined and progressively adjusted. As a result, we developed a descriptive code that arranged the collected data in nine areas and nearly 100 description fields, ultimately allowing every record to be retrieved through different authorized access points. To delve deeper into the shapes and meanings of these representations, we designed three of these areas in accordance with the theoretical foundations of modern iconography and iconology, which establish three distinct phases in the description, analysis, and interpretation of objects in Art. This tool fills a gap in the scientific literature and opens new paths of study. The way data have been structured generates a description model that can be extrapolated to other subjects. Replacing book description fields with description fields related to other types of objects produces a system capable of describing and cataloging any type of iconography.