RKD STUDIES

This guide explains the main features of the DttG database and demonstrates its core search and filtering functions. Please note that the database is optimised for desktop devices alone, as are the instructions below.

Database information
Users can find information about the database on the “Home” and “About” pages (upper left), which give basic information about the project’s data sources and partners. A drop-down menu labelled “Database’ appear in the upper right corner of each page. From here, users can navigate to “Database Information” to find more detailed information about the Reliability and Colour systems (with a drop-down menu for the Colour Checker with HEX codes) as well as the database specifications and additional information about terminology and data entry.

Browsing and painting information
From the “Database” drop-down menu, users can navigate to four browsing views. “Data entries” gives all of the current entries on a series of cards, which show basic information about each painting. This is similar to the “Tabular data” view, but the browsing mode is another way of seeing the entries. Eventually, we hope to add thumbnail images for each painting, which will make this view even more helpful. The next browsing page is “Artists,” which shows cards for all of the artists in the database alphabetically, with birth and death dates and the number of artworks by that painter currently in the database. If users click on an artist, they will see a page of all paintings by that artist in the database. “Places of execution” shows simple cards for all of the cities where paintings were (likely) executed, as well as how many entries have been linked to that city. If users click on a city card, they will be able to view all of the database paintings (likely) painted in that city. Finally, users can choose “Museums” to see all of the institutions holding database paintings, and how many each collection has. By clicking on the name of the collection users can see all of the paintings in that collection. This view is particularly helpful for planning on-site visits.

All painting cards (or painting titles in the Tabular data view) lead to an individual page for that artwork, which shows metadata about the painting and the ground layers, links to the painting at on its institutional website and to the RKDimages page for that work and also lists the source for the technical data. If published, this is shown as a Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), 17th edition citation, if unpublished it will list the institution as well as the researchers responsible.

Search/filter
The first option in the “Database” drop-down menu is “Tabular data”, which shows all of the paintings in the database in one continuous table. This is the main interface for querying the database. It opens by default in Simple Search mode, but users can switch to Advanced Search from the top left of the header and toggle the visibility of the search form using the button on the right.

The table, which shows all entries at first and is then narrowed down with search parameters, lists basic information about each painting including ID, Title (click to go to individual painting page), Artist (click to go to individual artist page), Date, Place of execution, Number of Ground Layers, Colour code (lower to upper, see Database Information for legend), and a schematic representation of the layers as they would appear in a cross-section, using the colours from the DttG Colour System (see Database Information for Colour Checker).

Simple Search
The simple search form can be used to search/filter the tabular data. By choosing desired parameters and clicking “Search” at the bottom of the form, the page will refresh with the number of results shown in the upper left of the table, and a table of the results automatically sorted by M number (an internal database identifier). Should users wish to sort results by another metric, they can choose Title, Artist, Date, Place of execution, Number of grounds, Lowest ground, or Uppermost ground in the “Sort by” drop-down of the search form.

The simple search form allows users to search for single artists (last name, first name; or just last name), narrow results by date ranges, search for single places of execution (city), choose an exact number of grounds (most often single/1 versus double/2), filter by support, and filter by city in which the artist was active. The Sort by function is described above, and finally users have the option to “Toggle top layer” which will show all the results in a table with only the uppermost ground colour (schematic) showing. This is helpful for visualising the colour painters were working on, visually simplifying multi-layered grounds.

Users can choose to narrow their results by using as many of the search/filter options as they like per query. Results will conform to all of the filters (e.g. if a user searches for Bloemaert but also chooses Utrecht in “Place of execution,” the results will not include the paintings he made in Amsterdam).

Advanced Search
For advanced queries, for which users wish to use more filters or be able to select multiple filter options, switch to Advanced Search. Users can now choose multiple Artists, Cities of Execution, Numbers of Grounds, and Colours of topmost or bottom grounds.

Multiple selections can be made by holding Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) while clicking. For example, users can select multiple artist names, which will then be highlighted in blue, to see a results of paintings by all of the chosen painters. Users can choose multiple options in all of the search fields to further narrow results. The “Colour of bottom ground” and “Colour of topmost ground” fields show only the broad colour category, so users choosing Grey will see results including grey, light grey, and dark grey grounds. An example of the utility of these fields is filtering for the common grey over red double ground. For this, users should select both Red and Orange in “Colour of bottom ground” (to account for the multiple shades of clay used for “red” ground layers) and Grey in “Colour of topmost ground.” The results will show all grey over red/orange double grounds, and can be sorted by any of the options in the “Order by” drop-down.

An additional function of the Advanced Search is the ability to filter by “Minimum Reliability.” To see a description of the reliability system, see the “Data Information” page of the database or section 2.4 of this study. In short, if users wish to only see results based on cross-section analysis, they should choose “2” as the minimum reliability.

Users can also “Toggle additional query fields” in the lower left of the advanced search form. This will add additional search fields for Support, Medium, and level of analysis (Sampled, Microscopy, Elemental Analysis). The level of analysis filters are another way of filtering for reliability, and match up with the Reliability system. Users can Command+click to choose multiple supports, just as with the search fields above. All paintings currently in the database are painted with an oil medium.

Users can reset the search form in the lower right of the form.

Export results
To export results as a CSV file with basic metadata and ground colour information for all paintings shown in the results at the time of export, click “Export to CSV” in the upper right corner of the table. The file will download automatically. When using data from the Down to the Ground database, please cite this RKD Study and acknowledge the database creators, as described in the colophon, along with the sources and researchers listed on each individual painting page of the database.