## Research Scenarios

- [Searching the Collection](#searching-the-collection)
- [Subject and Iconographic Search](#subject-and-iconographic-search)
- [Artwork Details and Metadata](#artwork-details-and-metadata)
- [High-Resolution Images](#high-resolution-images)
- [Artist Timelines](#artist-timelines)
- [Curated Sets](#curated-sets)
- [Collection Changes](#collection-changes)
- [Semantic Search](#semantic-search)
- [Provenance Research](#provenance-research)
- [Structured Text Search](#structured-text-search)
- [Inscriptions and Marks](#inscriptions-and-marks)

The links following each research question show you how the query was answered in Claude Desktop. However, they only reproduce the text of the response (no image viewer or visualisations). For some queries, 'extended thinking' had been enabled in Claude to allow you to trace (to some degree) the model's step-by-step 'reasoning' during a task.

## Searching the Collection

### 1. Mapping an Artist's Output Across Media

*What is the actual distribution of Rembrandt's works in the Rijksmuseum across painting, printmaking, and drawing — and how does this challenge popular perceptions of him as primarily a painter?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/ad43a233-e48a-49ad-bd72-bd7828a0036c)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "type"` and `creator: "Rembrandt"` returns the full distribution across all media in a single call
- Follow up with `search_artwork` using `creator: "Rembrandt"` and `type: "painting"` (or `"print"`, `"drawing"`) to browse specific categories
- `get_artwork_details` on selected works from each category for full metadata

**Why it matters:** The Rijksmuseum holds ~30 Rembrandt paintings but over 1,000 prints and hundreds of drawings. Most students encounter Rembrandt through a handful of iconic canvases. Seeing the actual proportions reframes his practice as fundamentally graphic.

### 2. Material Culture Beyond the Canon

*What is the scope of the Rijksmuseum's non-European holdings? How are Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian objects distributed across media, and where were they produced?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/b4a0033d-4391-4040-8626-8630b08e2f8c)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "type"` and `productionPlace: "Japan"` returns the full media distribution for Japanese-produced works in a single call — repeat for `"China"`, `"Java"`, `"India"`
- Use `depictedPlace` to find works that *represent* these places, regardless of where they were made — separating objects produced in Asia from European depictions of Asia
- Use `imageAvailable: true` to assess digitisation coverage, or `imageAvailable: false` to surface the un-digitised backlog
- `search_artwork` to browse specific subsets (e.g. Japanese ceramics, Indian textiles)

**Why it matters:** The Rijksmuseum positions itself as a museum of Dutch art *and* history, which includes centuries of global trade. The combination of `productionPlace` and `depictedPlace` enables a crucial distinction: objects *from* Asia versus European images *of* Asia.

### 3. Tracking the Adoption of Artistic Techniques

*When did etching overtake engraving as the dominant printmaking technique in the Netherlands, and how do lesser-known techniques — mezzotint, aquatint, woodcut — appear in the Rijksmuseum collection over time?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/85e48003-9abe-43fb-8088-0b57aeb7b2b1)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "decade"`, `type: "print"`, `technique: "engraving"` returns the full chronological distribution of engravings — repeat with `technique: "etching"` to compare the two curves
- Extend to `technique: "mezzotint"`, `"woodcut"`, `"aquatint"` to map the full technical repertoire over time
- `search_artwork` and `get_artwork_details` on selected works from each technique to examine materials and production context

**Why it matters:** The shift from engraving to etching is a defining transition in European printmaking. Date-wildcard queries make this transition quantifiable at collection scale, and the results reveal whether the Rijksmuseum's holdings reflect the standard chronology or complicate it.

---

## Subject and Iconographic Search

`search_artwork` includes [40 database-backed filters](search-parameters.md) drawn from a vocabulary database of ~417,000 controlled terms mapped to ~833,000 artworks via ~14.7 million mappings, enriched with creator biographical data (~49K life dates, ~64K gender annotations, ~15.5K Wikidata IDs) and a spatial place hierarchy (~20.9K geocoded places, 64% of known places). These enable searches by what is depicted, where it was made, who made it (including life dates, gender, and production roles), what is written on it, what the museum says about it, and how large it is.

### 4. Mapping the Visual Rhetoric of the Stadholders

*How were the successive Princes of Orange visually represented across different media, and can we trace shifts in propaganda strategy from Maurice to William III?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/3db41904-f9ea-43ba-bf45-7d210213d71e)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "type"` and `depictedPerson: "Maurice"` returns the full media distribution in a single call — repeat for `"Frederick Henry"`, `"William II"`, `"William III"`
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "decade"` and `depictedPerson` for each stadholder to map the chronological spread of their representation
- `search_artwork` to browse specific subsets (e.g. paintings of William III, prints of Maurice)
- Use `get_artwork_details` on selected results to compare how each ruler was staged — martial, dynastic, classical

**Why it matters:** The Orange-Nassau dynasty used visual media strategically, but the balance between painted portraits (diplomatic gifts, court display) and printed imagery (popular circulation, political pamphlets) shifted across generations. A depicted-person search makes this media strategy empirically visible.

### 5. Production Geography and the Network of Printmaking Cities

*Which cities dominate the Rijksmuseum's printmaking holdings, and how do the principal printmakers differ between Haarlem, Amsterdam, Leiden, and Antwerp?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/412abe3e-77e6-4296-8ba2-1d53a425cf17)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "productionPlace"`, `type: "print"` returns the top print-producing cities ranked by count
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "creator"`, `type: "print"`, `productionPlace: "Haarlem"` to identify the key printmakers at each centre — repeat for `"Amsterdam"`, `"Leiden"`, `"Antwerp"`
- Add `creationDateFrom`/`creationDateTo` to narrow by period
- Use `search_persons` with `profession: "print maker"` and `birthPlace: "Haarlem"` to find printmakers born in the city, then feed a name into `search_artwork({creator})`; compare against `productionPlace: "Haarlem"` (artists who *worked* there) — though birth-place matching is approximate for collaborative prints, where several hands share one plate
- `search_artwork` to browse specific subsets and `get_artwork_details` for full metadata

**Why it matters:** Haarlem was the dominant centre of printmaking in the late 16th century until Amsterdam overtook it in the 17th. Production-place queries reveal the relative weight of each city in the collection, and comparing the leading printmakers at each centre surfaces secondary figures whose role may have been overlooked.

### 6. Iconographic Traditions Across Media

*How does the iconography of "vanitas" function differently in painting versus printmaking? Do the same symbolic conventions — skulls, hourglasses, extinguished candles, musical instruments — appear with equal frequency in both media?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/94d6f781-1328-46f3-8ca9-0723475f61db)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "type"` and `subject: "vanitas"` to compare the distribution across painting, print, and drawing in a single call
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "decade"` and `subject: "vanitas"` to map the chronological spread
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "creator"` and `subject: "vanitas"` to identify whether certain artists specialised in vanitas imagery
- `search_artwork` with `subject: "vanitas"` and `type: "painting"` (or `"print"`) to browse specific subsets
- For a broader net: `semantic_search` with `query: "vanitas symbolism and mortality"` can surface works that engage with vanitas *themes* — transience, decay, the futility of worldly pursuits — even when they are not tagged with the Iconclass `vanitas` label

**Why it matters:** A subject-based search that crosses media boundaries enables systematic comparison of how a single iconographic tradition was adapted to different formats — the intimate painted still life versus the widely circulated print — without requiring extensive manual catalogue work. Semantic search extends the reach beyond formally tagged works to those where curators have described vanitas themes in narrative texts.

---

## Artwork Details and Metadata

`get_artwork_details` returns [26 metadata categories](metadata-categories.md) per artwork — far more than a typical museum search interface exposes. This depth enables object-level research that would otherwise require on-site catalogue consultation.

### 7. Dimensions as Evidence for Workshop Practice

*Were there standard panel sizes used in Dutch workshops? Can we identify clusters of dimensions that suggest pre-prepared supports from panel makers?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/51f0d0c8-bb82-4e84-aa7e-22d5eb386fdf)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_artwork` with `type: "painting"`, `material: "panel"`, and dimension ranges in centimetres (e.g. `heightRange: "40-50"`, `widthRange: "30-40"`) to find panels of a specific size cluster
- Compare across size ranges to identify recurring dimensions that suggest standard panel formats
- `get_artwork_details` on results to check exact measurements, creator, and production context — add `creationDate` to narrow by period (e.g. `17*` for the 17th century)

**Why it matters:** The dimension filters make it possible to search by physical size directly, rather than retrieving all works and filtering manually. The Rijksmuseum's structured dimension data can corroborate (or challenge) what we know from guild records about panel maker standards.

### 8. Credit Lines and Acquisition Context

*How did the Rijksmuseum acquire its core Rembrandt collection? What proportion came through purchase, bequest, or state allocation, and when?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/094cc47e-6381-49ab-a22a-a098254a3945)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_provenance` with `creator: "Rembrandt"` for the full parsed ownership chain of each work — filter by `transferType: "sale"` or `"bequest"` to trace specific acquisition modes, or sort by `sortBy: "price"` to rank by transaction value. This is where creator scoping holds, so make it the primary call
- `search_provenance` with `creditLineQuery: "purchase"` (repeat with `"bequest"`, `"gift"`, `"loan"`, or the Dutch `"aankoop"`, `"legaat"`, `"schenking"`, since credit lines are catalogued in Dutch) as a fallback for works lacking parsed provenance. Note: `creditLineQuery` is a standalone mode — it ignores `creator` and every other filter and returns collection-wide credit-line matches in `creditLineResults`, so scope to Rembrandt in the separate structured call above and intersect client-side rather than passing `creator` here
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "transferType"` and `creator: "Rembrandt"` for a single-call distribution of how Rembrandt works changed hands
- `get_artwork_details` on each for full provenance chain and credit line context

**Why it matters:** Acquisition history that would otherwise mean reading each catalogue entry by hand becomes a few searches. The parsed provenance records (~48,000 artworks) trace how works changed hands — by owner, transfer type, date, place, and price — while the credit-line text reaches a further ~360,000 works whose acquisition is noted only in the museum's acknowledgement line.

### 9. The Most Prolific Women Artists

*Who are the most prolific women artists in the Rijksmuseum's collection, when were they active, and how do I move from a name to the works themselves?*

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_persons` with `gender: "female"` and `hasArtworks: true` returns every woman with attributed works — over 2,200 of them — ranked by output, led by Jeanne Bieruma Oosting (1,125 works), Eva Pennink-Boelen (766), and Maria Vos (557)
- Add `bornAfter: 1800` and `bornBefore: 1900` to isolate a generation — some 646 women born in the 19th century — using the life-date fields the person index carries
- Feed a name into `search_artwork` with `creator: "Bieruma Oosting, Jeanne"` to browse her works, then `get_artwork_details` / `get_artwork_image` on individual pieces

**Why it matters:** Gender is a property of the artist, not the artwork, so it lives in the `search_persons` person index rather than as a filter on works. Querying it there surfaces the full population of women artists — including the many the canon overlooks — ranked by how much of the collection they actually account for, and dated so the cohort can be split by generation. An artist's work count reconciles exactly with a `creator` search, giving a clean path from a name in the person index to the works themselves.

---

## High-Resolution Images

`get_artwork_image` provides an interactive viewer with a high-resolution, deep-zoom feature. For some artworks, this is sufficient to examine individual brushstrokes, craquelure patterns, and inscriptions that are invisible in standard reproductions.

### 10. Technical Art History at the Brushstroke Level

*What materials, technique, and support were used in Rembrandt's "The Night Watch", what are its exact dimensions, and what inscriptions does it carry? Open the high-resolution image for close examination of the paint surface.* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/344b8837-139a-4b2a-8846-990a88e6a912)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `get_artwork_details` with `objectNumber: "SK-C-5"` returns materials, technique statement, structured dimensions, and inscriptions
- `get_artwork_image` opens the interactive deep-zoom viewer for close examination at maximum magnification
- `inspect_artwork_image` retrieves specific regions as base64 for direct AI analysis — e.g. crop the lower-right corner to read a signature, or zoom into a face to examine brushwork. 

**Why it matters:** Technical metadata — support material, paint type, exact dimensions — frames what the viewer reveals. Knowing a canvas is 363 x 437 cm contextualises the scale of visible brushwork; knowing the inscription text lets the user verify it against the painted surface at full zoom. Direct image inspection by the AI adds a layer of visual analysis that goes beyond metadata alone.

### 11. Disambiguating an Artist Dynasty

*The van Mieris family ran a Leiden painting workshop across three generations, several of them sharing the name Frans. Which van Mierises does the Rijksmuseum hold, how do I tell them apart, and can I compare the founder's fijnschilder touch with a son's at high magnification?*

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_persons` with `name: "van Mieris"` returns the family disambiguated by life dates — Frans the Elder (1635–1681), his sons Jan (1660–1690) and Willem (1662–1747), and grandson Frans the Younger (1689–1763) — each with its own work count
- Feed a member's exact returned name into `search_artwork` with `creator: "Frans van Mieris (I)"` to retrieve only that hand's works — the count reconciles exactly with the person record — then repeat for each son to assemble the family's output
- `get_artwork_image` on a panel by the elder — e.g. *The Letter Writer* (SK-A-261) — and one by a son, to open both in the deep-zoom viewer for side-by-side comparison of the fijnschilder surface

**Why it matters:** A plain creator search collapses an artist dynasty into one ambiguous string — three generations of van Mierises, several named Frans, tangled into a single result. `search_persons` separates them by life dates, so a researcher can pick the exact hand before retrieving any works. The disambiguated name passed back as `creator` returns only that artist's output, and the viewer then supports the close looking that distinguishes a master's touch from his workshop's. This two-step pattern — resolve the person, then query the works — is how the toolset now handles every identity question, since the artist layer lives in `search_persons`.

### 12. Reading Inscriptions and Examining Details with AI Vision

*Open Utamaro's "Waitress at the Matsu Higashi House" (RP-P-1956-605) and read the Japanese text on the print — the catalogue has no transcribed inscriptions for this work. Highlight the text areas you find and tell me if you notice anything missing that you'd expect on a print of this period.* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/00ae1128-7d23-4b97-9f64-d00a26c434ba)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `get_artwork_details` confirms the inscriptions field is empty — the catalogue has not transcribed the Japanese text
- `get_artwork_image` opens the interactive deep-zoom viewer
- `inspect_artwork_image` with `region: "full"` gives the AI an overview of the composition — it can identify the establishment signboard (松東居, "Matsu Higashi-ya") in the upper right and the artist's signature (哥麿筆, "drawn by Utamaro") below it, neither of which appears in the structured metadata
- Targeted crops let the AI examine each text element at high resolution, and `navigate_viewer` with `add_overlay` highlights them for the user
- The AI can also note what is *absent* — in this case, no publisher's seal (hanmoto) or censor's seal (kiwame-in) is visible, which is unusual for a print of this era and may indicate trimming
- **User-directed inspection:** click the image viewer to give it focus, then press `i` (or click the rightmost toolbar button) to enter interactive mode. Draw a rectangle around any area of interest — the coordinates are sent to the chat as a prompt. Add your own question (e.g. "what does this text say?" or "is there a seal mark here?") and the AI will inspect that exact region at high resolution

**Why it matters:** The Rijksmuseum's catalogue metadata for Japanese prints typically does not include transcriptions of the printed Japanese text — artist signatures, establishment names, publisher marks, and poem cartouches are visible on the image but absent from the structured data. Direct image inspection by the AI can often read and translate this text, surfacing information that would otherwise require specialist knowledge of Japanese. It can also flag missing elements — a print without a publisher's seal raises questions about trimming or provenance that a researcher might want to investigate. 

### 13. Reproductive Prints and Their Painted Sources

*How faithfully do reproductive prints translate the compositions of their painted sources? Find prints made "after" a specific painting and compare the print with the original at high magnification.* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/e822477d-6039-4103-8361-7ef77c7a523b)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_artwork` with `productionRole: "after painting by"` and `creator: "Rembrandt"` to find reproductive prints based on Rembrandt's compositions
- `get_artwork_details` on a result — the `relatedObjects` field links to the source painting
- `get_artwork_details` with the related object's URI to retrieve the source painting's full metadata
- `get_artwork_image` on both the print and the painting for side-by-side comparison at high zoom

**Why it matters:** The `productionRole` filter distinguishes the *function* an artist played in creating a specific work — "after painting by" identifies reproductive prints explicitly, rather than requiring the researcher to infer the relationship from titles or descriptions. The `relatedObjects` link then provides a direct path from reproduction to source, and the viewer enables the visual comparison that art historical analysis demands.

---

## Artist Timelines

`search_artwork` with a `creator` filter returns results sorted by importance, which can be re-sorted by date to reveal career patterns invisible when browsing search results. The `generate-artist-timeline` prompt automates this workflow.

### 14. Tracing Career Evolution Through Subject and Place

*Jacob van Ruisdael's landscapes are said to evolve from flat dune scenes in his Haarlem years to dramatic waterfalls and panoramic views after his move to Amsterdam. Does the timeline of his works in the Rijksmuseum support this narrative?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/7f25a37c-f8e2-488d-9d19-9aba27f932af)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_artwork` with `creator: "Jacob van Ruisdael"`, then sort results by date
- `get_artwork_details` on each work — read description, title, and `production[].place` to identify subject matter and where each work was made
- Map subject type and production place against date: do the dune landscapes cluster in the early years and the waterfalls in the later ones?

**Why it matters:** Art historical narratives about career evolution are often based on a handful of securely dated works. A timeline across a full museum holding tests these narratives against a larger evidence base — and the production-place data can reveal whether the geographic move and the stylistic shift actually coincide.

### 15. Medium Shifts Within a Career

*George Hendrik Breitner worked as a painter, draughtsman, and photographer. Does the timeline of his works in the Rijksmuseum reveal a clear sequence — drawing first, then painting, then photography — or did he work across media simultaneously?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/9c62f373-2dfc-4a63-bd87-26d376b1cac3)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "type"` and `creator: "Breitner"` confirms the multi-media practice at a glance — some 700 drawings, 160 photographs, and 50 paintings, alongside prints and studies
- `search_artwork` with `creator: "George Hendrik Breitner"`, then sort by date
- `get_artwork_details` on each work to extract medium and technique
- Plot medium against date: do drawings cluster in the early years, paintings in the middle, photographs at the end — or is the practice mixed throughout?

**Why it matters:** An artist classified under multiple professions may have practised them simultaneously or sequentially. The timeline reveals which, and whether any transition aligns with documented biographical events.

---

## Curated Sets

`list_curated_sets` and `browse_set` expose the museum's 193 curatorial groupings — thematic, scholarly, and exhibition-based. These sets encode expert knowledge about how objects relate to each other.

### 16. Reconstructing Past Exhibitions

*What objects were included in Rijksmuseum exhibitions related to Rembrandt, and how did the curatorial selection construct a narrative?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/03dad0c4-731a-411a-9223-95ead26a5917)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `list_curated_sets` with a keyword filter to find the relevant set
- `browse_set` with the set identifier to retrieve all included objects
- `get_artwork_details` on key objects to understand what they contribute to the exhibition thesis

**Why it matters:** Exhibitions are arguments made with objects — the selection, sequencing, and juxtaposition of works constitutes an interpretation. Being able to retrieve the object list for a past exhibition enables historiographic analysis of curatorial practice.

### 17. Finding Thematic Connections Curators Have Already Made

*Has the Rijksmuseum curated any groupings related to Dutch maritime trade, and what objects did they consider central to that story?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/88ca435e-9854-457e-9738-a8f1423b0217)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `list_curated_sets` with `query: "maritime"` or `query: "trade"` or `query: "VOC"`
- `browse_set` to see the contents — paintings, maps, ship models, porcelain, documents

**Why it matters:** Curated sets cross media boundaries. These cross-media juxtapositions can reveal connections that medium-specific searches miss.

### 18. Assessing Collection Depth for Grant Applications

*How many Japanese prints does the Rijksmuseum hold, what curated sets relate to Japanese art, what date range do the holdings cover, and which artists are best represented?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/303fd236-da49-4e97-a7c0-ca1b484b3bc1)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "creator"`, `productionPlace: "Japan"`, `type: "print"` to identify the most prominent printmakers and get the total count
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "decade"`, `productionPlace: "Japan"`, `type: "print"` for the chronological spread
- `list_curated_sets` filtered for Japanese-related sets
- `browse_set` on relevant sets to see the range of artists, dates, and subjects

**Why it matters:** Grant applications require demonstrating that the proposed research site has adequate resources. Concrete numbers — total holdings, date range, named artists, curated set identifiers — strengthen the feasibility argument.

---

## Collection Changes

`get_recent_changes` tracks what the museum adds and updates, providing a live feed of cataloguing activity.

### 19. Tracking New Acquisitions in a Research Area

*Has the Rijksmuseum added any new 17th-century paintings to its collection in the past six months? If so, who are the artists and what are the subjects?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/beb8831b-b798-44b1-8347-fae35317f466)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `get_recent_changes` with a date range covering the last six months
- Use `identifiersOnly: true` for a fast scan of recently changed object numbers
- `get_artwork_details` on results to filter for paintings from the 1600s and examine creator, date, and description

**Why it matters:** New acquisitions can fill gaps in the evidence or provide crucial comparisons for ongoing research. A date-scoped query surfaces recently added or modified records without requiring the researcher to monitor the museum's website.

---

## Semantic Search

`semantic_search` finds artworks by meaning, concept, or theme using natural language — ranking all ~833,000 artworks by embedding similarity to a free-text query. Unlike the structured filters above, semantic search works with concepts that cannot be expressed as vocabulary terms, Iconclass notations, or keyword matches. It is most effective when the Rijksmuseum's curatorial narrative texts discuss the relevant concept explicitly. For full technical details, see [Semantic Search](semantic-search.md).

### 20. Discovering Thematic Connections Beyond Formal Cataloguing

*Which artworks in the Rijksmuseum engage with the theme of cultural exchange between Europe and Asia — not just objects "from" Asia or "depicting" Asia, but works where the mixing of cultures is the subject?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/8316d9dc-27ac-4c40-a42f-b2c355df8b35)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `semantic_search` with `query: "cultural exchange between East and West"` — returns artworks ranked by how closely their catalogued text relates to this concept
- Review the source text for each result to understand *why* it was retrieved — e.g. a painting of the Castle of Batavia may rank highly because its curatorial narrative describes the mixing of ethnic groups under VOC trade
- Follow up with `get_artwork_details` on the most relevant results for full metadata
- Compare with `search_artwork` using `depictedPlace: "Batavia"` or `productionPlace: "Japan"` to see what the structured filters find — the overlap reveals which works are discoverable both ways, and which are only reachable through semantic search

**Why it matters:** "Cultural exchange" is not a vocabulary term, an Iconclass notation, or a keyword in any structured field. It is an interpretive concept that exists in curatorial narratives and descriptive texts. Semantic search is the only path to these works — and the source text grounding explains the connection, rather than leaving the researcher to guess why a result appeared.

### 21. Atmospheric and Emotional Concepts in Art

*Can we find artworks in the Rijksmuseum that evoke a sense of solitude or isolation — a single figure in an empty landscape, a lone ship on a vast sea, an abandoned building?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/32e517fd-849e-4289-b5b9-13f88b0e6a05)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `semantic_search` with `query: "loneliness and isolation in a vast empty space"`
- The model matches against embedded titles, descriptions, narratives, and inscriptions — a farmhouse described as standing alone in flat terrain, a ship on an empty horizon, a solitary figure in a landscape
- Filter with `type: "painting"` to focus on paintings if the initial results skew toward works on paper (a known bias — prints and drawings outnumber paintings ~87:1 in the collection)
- Use the source text to assess whether the "loneliness" is in the curatorial interpretation or inferred from sparse descriptions — this distinction matters for research rigour

**Why it matters:** Emotional and atmospheric qualities are not catalogued as metadata. No Iconclass code maps to "loneliness." The `description` and `curatorialNarrative` text filters require exact word matches and won't find synonyms or related concepts. Semantic search bridges this gap — imperfectly, since it depends on what curators have written, but it is often the only available path. The source text grounding makes this limitation transparent.

### 22. Cross-Language Conceptual Search

*Ich suche Blumenstillleben — Gemälde von Blumensträußen in einer Vase, besonders aus dem 17. Jahrhundert. Welche Werke hat das Rijksmuseum?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/5e2da910-6f33-43b7-94a4-689da7aa16f1)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `semantic_search` with `query: "Blumenstrauß in einer Vase"` — the multilingual embedding model handles the German query against Dutch and English catalogue text
- Review results for canonical flower still lifes — Rachel Ruysch, Jan van Huysum, Ambrosius Bosschaert
- If expected canonical works are missing, reformulate in English: `"bouquet of flowers in a vase"` — English queries tend to have slightly higher precision against the bilingual catalogue
- Combine with `search_artwork` using `subject: "flowers"` and `type: "painting"` to verify completeness — the structured search catches works tagged with the Iconclass term but missed by the embedding model, and vice versa

**Why it matters:** The Rijksmuseum's catalogue is predominantly Dutch, with English translations for major works only. The multilingual embedding model allows researchers to query in their own language without knowing the Dutch vocabulary — though with a precision trade-off. The recommended workflow — semantic search first, then structured verification — combines the reach of embeddings with the precision of controlled vocabulary.

---

## Provenance Research

`search_provenance` exposes parsed ownership chains for ~48,000 artworks — structured events with parties, transfer types, dates, locations, prices, and provenance gaps. Two data layers are available: raw events (Layer 1) and interpreted ownership periods with durations (Layer 2). `collection_stats` provides aggregate provenance distributions (transfer type, decade, location, party) for quantitative analysis. 

### 23. Wartime Transfers and Provenance Gaps

*Find artworks that changed hands between 1933 and 1945 through confiscation or restitution, and show me their full ownership chains. Which ones have gaps in their provenance during this period?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/b6c4a4c2-de36-4f14-bc20-7a12a2832092)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_provenance` with `transferType: "confiscation"`, `dateFrom: 1933`, `dateTo: 1945` to find wartime confiscations — repeat with `transferType: "restitution"` for post-war returns
- `search_provenance` with `transferType: "confiscation"`, `dateFrom: 1933`, `dateTo: 1945`, `excludeTransferType: "restitution"` to find confiscated works that were *never* restituted — the `excludeTransferType` applies artwork-level negation
- `search_provenance` with `hasGap: true`, `dateFrom: 1933`, `dateTo: 1945` to find works with undocumented periods during the war years — these are red flags for unresolved displacement
- Each result includes the full provenance chain, so the ownership story before and after the wartime event is immediately visible
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "transferType"`, `provenanceDateFrom: 1933`, `provenanceDateTo: 1945` for a quantitative overview of how artworks changed hands during this period

**Why it matters:** Provenance research for the period 1933–1945 is a legal and ethical obligation for museums holding works that may have been looted or forcibly sold. The combination of `transferType` filtering, `excludeTransferType` negation, and `hasGap` detection makes it possible to systematically identify works requiring further investigation — confiscated but not restituted, or with undocumented gaps during the critical years. Without structured provenance data, this work requires manually reading each artwork's free-text ownership history.

### 24. Generational Ownership and Collection Dispersal

*Find artworks that passed through four or more generations by descent within a single family, then were sold at auction. How long did these family collections typically survive before dispersal?* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/fb01bd2b-c6fb-4a5b-af74-05fb32ddd731)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_provenance` with `layer: "periods"`, `acquisitionMethod: "by_descent"`, `minDuration: 80`, `sortBy: "duration"`, `sortOrder: "desc"` to find the longest-held family collections (80+ years approximates four generations)
- Examine the full chains — look for consecutive `by_descent` events involving the same family name, followed by a `sale` event marking the dispersal
- `search_provenance` with `transferType: "by_descent"`, `sortBy: "eventCount"`, `sortOrder: "desc"` to find works with the most provenance events of this type — a proxy for the deepest generational chains
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "transferType"`, `hasProvenance: true` to see the overall prevalence of `by_descent` transfers (~10,600 events) relative to sales, gifts, and bequests
- For individual cases, `search_provenance` with `objectNumber` retrieves the complete chain to trace the family lineage and the circumstances of eventual sale

**Why it matters:** The history of art collecting is also a history of family wealth and its dispersal. Works that passed through multiple generations by inheritance before reaching the market represent long-lived private collections — their dispersal often marks historical inflection points (economic crises, wars, succession failures). The `by_descent` transfer type and duration-based sorting make these patterns systematically discoverable across the collection.

### 25. Art Dealers as Intermediaries

*Which art dealers appear as both buyers and sellers in the Rijksmuseum provenance records? For each, show me what they sold to the museum versus what they bought from private collectors, and the price ranges involved.* [Link](https://claude.ai/share/59acc3af-dce5-428e-981c-3fdb8673371d)

**How the tools enable it:**
- `collection_stats` with `dimension: "party"`, `hasProvenance: true` to identify the most frequently appearing parties across all provenance records
- `search_provenance` with `party: "Goudstikker"` (or any dealer name) to retrieve all artworks that passed through their hands — the full chain for each artwork shows the dealer's role in context
- Examine each chain for the dealer's position: `sender` (selling the work) versus `receiver` (acquiring it), as indicated by the `partyPosition` field on each party record
- `search_provenance` with `party: "Goudstikker"`, `hasPrice: true`, `sortBy: "price"`, `sortOrder: "desc"` to rank transactions by value and reveal the price ranges
- `search_provenance` with `party: "Goudstikker"`, `transferType: "sale"` to isolate sales specifically, distinguishing them from gifts, bequests, or other transfer types
- Repeat for other major dealers (e.g. `"Duveen"`, `"Knoedler"`, `"Hoogendijk"`) to build a comparative picture of dealer networks

**Why it matters:** Art dealers are pivotal intermediaries whose buying and selling patterns shaped museum collections. A dealer who both acquired works from private collectors and sold to the Rijksmuseum acted as a filter — their taste and commercial strategy determined which works entered the public collection. The `party` search with `partyPosition` and price data makes dealer networks empirically traceable, surfacing patterns that are otherwise scattered across individual provenance entries. 

---

## Structured Text Search

The basic text filters of the `search_artwork` tool — `title`, `description`, `inscription`, `curatorialNarrative` — each search a single field at a time and treat search terms as one literal phrase. That is enough for most searches, but it cannot reach questions that turn on *how language differs* in a catalogue: the same idea phrased two ways, two words that must stand together, a term whose spelling varies from record to record. The three scenarios below each use the `textQuery` parameter to begin from a research question the basic filters cannot express, grounded in the actual language of the catalogue's three long-form text fields: the Dutch, denotative `description`; the mostly-English, interpretive `curatorialNarrative`; and the literal transcribed `inscription`. 

### 26. The Beeldenstorm in Two Languages

*Where in the Rijksmuseum's collection does the Beeldenstorm surface in the catalogue's own words? A cataloguer may have named it "beeldenstorm" in the Dutch object description, or a curator may have framed it in English as "iconoclasm" in the wall text. Find every work the catalogue text ties to the event, in either language.*

**How the tools enable it:**
- A `textQuery` with cross-column *either/or* logic — match `"beeldenstorm"` in the Dutch `description` **OR** `"iconoclasm"`/`"iconoclastic"` in the English `curatorialNarrative`
- Optionally add `type` or `creationDate` to see how the treatment splits — the bulk are later prints depicting the 1566 events, alongside a handful of paintings and drawings
- `get_artwork_details` on the results to read the full description or narrative that triggered the match

**Why it matters:** Because the Dutch descriptions and the English narratives record the event in different words, `description: beeldenstorm` and `curatorialNarrative: iconoclasm` label almost entirely different works — and a basic search can only return the few that match both at once, never the full set that matches either. Searching the two fields as alternatives recovers the full set. Otherwise the choice of search language silently decides which half of the holding a researcher ever sees.

### 27. Reuniting Pendant Portraits

*Dutch portraits were often painted as pendants — companion pieces made and hung as a pair, the husband on one panel and his wife on its mate — but such pairs were frequently split between heirs, dealers, and collections. Which works does the Rijksmuseum catalogue as pendant portraits, and do the descriptions name the other half?*

**How the tools enable it:**
- A `textQuery` proximity clause requiring the Dutch terms `pendant` and `portret` within a few words of each other in the `description`
- `get_artwork_details` on the results to read the description — many name the companion outright (*"Pendant van SK-A-963"*) or identify the spouse (*"echtgenote van…"*)
- Retrieve the cross-referenced object number to pull up the surviving other half and compare the pair

**Why it matters:** Companion portraits were conceived as a pair, yet pairs were routinely divided between heirs and sales, so reuniting them is a standard task of portrait scholarship — and the catalogue often records the link in prose, naming the partner panel or the spouse it depicts. The difficulty is that *pendant* is ambiguous: on its own it returns over 1,200 works, most of them hanging jewels, frames, and furniture. Only its nearness to *portret* pulls the companion-piece sense — isolating the 73 genuine pendant-portrait statements, most of them 16th- and 17th-century paintings and prints, from the 419 descriptions where the two words merely co-occur somewhere. An ordinary keyword search cannot draw that line; proximity can.

### 28. The Division of Labour on the Printed Plate

*Dutch and Flemish prints record their production chain directly on the plate, in Latin: who designed the composition (`invenit`/`inventor`), who engraved it (`sculpsit`/`fecit`/`incidit`), and who published it (`excudit`). Find prints whose inscription documents all three — and list those cases where one person did two jobs, such as the engraver who was also his own publisher.*

**How the tools enable it:**
- A `textQuery` over the `inscription` field combining prefix matching (to absorb the abbreviated and agent-noun variants) with within-field OR and a multi-clause AND
- Drop the publisher clause to widen the net to any designer-plus-engraver pair
- `get_artwork_details` on results to read the literal inscription — e.g. *"GvBreen sculptor et excudit"* (engraver and publisher in one), or *"Joan Blommendaal Inventor … Philib. Bouttats Sculpt. et Excudit Amstelo:"*

**Why it matters:** The structured `productionRole` filter is only a simplified summary of the inscription: it reduces the inscribed Latin to a few English labels, is filled in only where a cataloguer matched a role to a named person, and cannot capture two roles falling to one person on a single plate (an engraver who published his own work). Searching the inscription itself consults the source rather than that summary. Because each role can be written many ways an exact search for *sculpsit* finds a fraction of what the word-stem `sculp*` does, which also gathers *sculptor* and *Sculpt.*; requiring all three roles binds the cohort to the 46 prints documenting the full chain. 

---

## Inscriptions and Marks

The `search_inscriptions` tool parses the catalogue's inscription field into typed segments *at query time* — collector's marks (keyed to the standard Lugt catalogue numbers), signatures, monograms, dates, hallmarks, numbers, and transcribed text — and returns, with each result, the `matchedInscriptions` that triggered it: the normalised type, the surface (`recto`/`verso`), the technique (`stamped`, `handwritten`, `engraved`, …), and the underlying raw Dutch/English segment pair, gloss-deduped. It is a different instrument from `search_artwork({inscription})`, which is a blunt full-text match over the same field, and from the `textQuery` patterns above: here the facets combine *within a single mark* — a handwritten signature on the recto must be one inscription, not three words that merely co-occur somewhere in the blob — and a Lugt number or a transcribed phrase is searched *as such* rather than as a keyword adrift in the text. That same-segment rule is what makes the counts trustworthy: a verso-signature query that a loose substring search would inflate to roughly 8,100 records resolves to about 1,475 sheets that actually bear a single mark answering all three facets.

One caveat governs every query below. The inscription field is best understood as the print room's mark-and-annotation log, not a transcription of everything written on a work: it is dominated by **verso collector's-mark stamps** — the museum's own and former owners' — while genuine artist- or image-applied text (signatures, captions, imprints) is a real but minority share, and coverage is high for prints and drawings yet thin for coins, medals, and posters whose legends were never keyed in. An empty result is not proof that an object bears no text. The flags `excludeCollectorMarkOnly` and `hasTranscribedText` exist precisely to clear the ownership-stamp boilerplate when what you want is the writing on the work itself.

### 29. Provenance Written on the Sheet: Collectors' Marks as Physical Evidence

*The collector François Gérard Waller (1867–1934) bequeathed his prints to the Rijksprentenkabinet and endowed a fund that still buys for it today. His own sheets bear his collector's mark — Lugt 2760 — stamped on the verso. Reconstruct what survives of Waller's personal collection from that mark, and check whether the museum's documentary provenance actually records his ownership or whether the stamp is the only trace.*

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_inscriptions` with `collectorMark: "Lugt 2760"` (or just `"2760"`) returns the sheets bearing Waller's stamp — on the order of 33,000 of them — each `matchedInscriptions` entry confirming the mark sits on the `verso`, `stamped`: physical evidence located on the object, not inferred from a catalogue note
- The number is known to be Waller's because it resolves through the published Lugt catalogue — *Les marques de collections de dessins & d'estampes*, freely searchable via the Fondation Custodia (marquesdecollections.fr), the standard authority for collectors' marks on prints and drawings; any unfamiliar Lugt number can be identified the same way
- First clear the institution's own stamps: the field's three commonest marks — `Lugt 2228`, `Lugt 240`, and `Lugt 2233` — are all the Rijksprentenkabinet marking *its own* acquisitions, not prior owners, and between them they blanket most of the corpus, so they must be set aside before a genuine former-owner mark like Waller's resolves
- Cross-check against `search_provenance`: a `party: "Waller"` search surfaces largely the **F. G. Waller Fund's** posthumous purchases — prints his endowment bought after 1934, which he never personally owned — so the collection defined by the *mark* and the fund's acquisitions recorded in the *credit lines* are two distinct legacies that share one name. For an individual stamped sheet the parsed ownership chain is often empty: print provenance is seldom written out, and the stamp itself is the record
- `get_artwork_image` opens the deep-zoom viewer to inspect the actual stamp on the verso, where the sheet has been digitised

**Why it matters:** A collector's mark is primary physical evidence of ownership, and across works on paper it is frequently the *only* record of where a sheet was before the museum — the parsed provenance corpus covers a small fraction of the collection and skews toward more fully documented paintings. The complication the tool exists to resolve is that the field's commonest marks are the Rijksprentenkabinet's own stamps; only by filtering those out does a genuine prior collection like Waller's come into view. Searching his Lugt number then turns the stamp into a finding aid — recovering the dispersed shape of one collection and, set against a provenance search for his *fund*, separating what the man personally owned from what his money later bought. One limit follows from the runtime parse: so common a mark trips the candidate cap (`candidatesCapped: true`) and returns a large *partial* window, so the tool characterises and samples a holding of this size rather than enumerating every sheet.

### 30. Dating and Attributing Silver by Its Hallmarks

*Wrought silver seldom carries a signature, but it is punched with a system of marks — a town mark, a date letter, a maker's mark, an assay mark for the alloy — that together fix where, when, and by whom it was made. Which objects in the Rijksmuseum carry these hallmarks, and can the maker's marks be tied to named silversmiths and cities?*

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_inscriptions` with `inscriptionType: ["maker's mark", "town mark", "date letter"]` (OR-combined) gathers the hallmarked objects — on the order of 1,600 of them — each result listing the marks it bears: a `town mark` reading `"Leiden"`, a `maker's mark` such as `"VR in rechthoek"`, *struck* or *cast* rather than written
- Add `inscriptionType: "alloy mark"` (Dutch *gehalteteken* — the lion that guarantees the silver standard) or `"duty mark"` to surface pieces assayed for content or taxed — the punches that certify the metal and pay the duty
- These results are decorative-arts objects — silver, pewter, bronze (`BK-` and `KOG-` numbers) — an entirely different stratum of the inscription field from the print room's collector stamps, with its own specialist vocabulary
- Tie a maker's mark to a person: `search_persons` for a silversmith of the right city and period, then `search_artwork` with `productionPlace: "Amsterdam"` (the dominant Dutch silver centre) or `"Leiden"` and a `type` filter to assemble that workshop's surviving output
- `get_artwork_details` for the full mark description and assay date, and `get_artwork_image` to examine the punches at high magnification

**Why it matters:** Hallmarks are the silver historian's dating and localising tool, and the structured `inscriptionType` facets draw a line a raw text search over the inscription field cannot — distinguishing a *town mark* from a *date letter* from a *maker's mark*, where an FTS sees only three indistinguishable strings. That turns the catalogue's mark descriptions into a queryable index of assay evidence. The caveat is honest: marks are often *described* ("standing figure") or only part-legible — but where a cataloguer has identified one, the transcribed value frequently cites the standard reference outright (e.g. *"P.B. (Citroen 1975, nr. 725)"*), a direct bridge from the punch to the named silversmith, so the facets point straight into the specialist hallmark literature rather than stopping short of it.

### 31. The Artist's Mark Beneath the Owners' Stamps

*Across the Rijksmuseum's prints and drawings, how many works did the artist sign by hand on the front with a full signature, and how many carry only a monogram of initials? Show a sample of each — and be sure these are the artist's own marks, not the ownership stamps that make up most of the inscription field.*

**How the tools enable it:**
- `search_inscriptions` with `inscriptionType: "signature"`, `placement: "recto"`, `technique: "handwritten"`, and `excludeCollectorMarkOnly: true` isolates works the artist signed by hand on the front — roughly 8,800 of them — stripping away the verso ownership boilerplate that makes up most of the field's bulk
- Switch `inscriptionType` to `"monogram"` to find the works marked only with initials on the recto — some 3,500 of them, from a printed *M.R.* to Jacques-Louis David's chalk *D* to Leprince's pen-and-ink *L.P.* — the connoisseur's hardest case, where the mark names the maker only if you can decode it
- Narrow to a single hand with `transcribedText`: e.g. `transcribedText: "Vincent"` alongside the signature facets returns the handful of photographs signed *Vincent Mentzel* — matched against the quoted text actually written on the work, not against the catalogue's creator field
- Confirm and extend with `search_artwork({creator})`, or read a single object's `parsedInscriptions` and `inscriptionSummary` via `get_artwork_details`; `get_artwork_image` then zooms in to read the mark on the sheet itself

**Why it matters:** The inscription field's value for the study of signing practice is buried under the ownership stamps that dominate it, and `search_artwork({inscription})` — a raw text match — cannot tell a `signature` segment from a `collector's mark`, or a recto inscription from a verso one. The structured facets and the `excludeCollectorMarkOnly` flag do exactly that, so a researcher can ask how an artist signed — full name versus monogram, pen versus chalk, and where on the sheet — and whether the convention shifts by period, status, or medium. The monogram view in particular converts an attribution problem into a searchable set: every work the catalogue records as bearing initials alone, ready to be matched against candidate hands.
