Cross-collection Linking of Botanical Imagery in Ghent Altarpiece to Learn More about Van Eyck’s Masterpiece and to Explore a Region’s Plant Richness and Diversity over Time

Abstract

As people on average only spent 20 seconds(s) observing an artwork, they mostly miss a lot of informative details that are contained within it. As an example, the 75 different plants that can be found in the Ghent Altarpiece is something not a lot of people are aware of. Within this article, we present a methodology, based on cross-collection linking, to create awareness about the botanical imagery in Van Eyck’s masterpiece and to inform people about their region’s plant richness and diversity over time. As such, this article is a nice example of how the interdisciplinary fields of cultural heritage and botany can go hand in hand to facilitate its dissemination to the general public. The plants in the painting can be queried by their name or by a picture taken with a mobile device—a plant recognition app is used to evaluate the pictures taken from the plants. A study has also been performed to evaluate these apps and to select the most appropriate one for the collection of plants in the Ghent Alterpiece. Currently, we link the detected plants to herbaria, observation data, Global Biodiversity Information Facility plantinfo, and recent wikimedia commons pictures, but other links can also be easily integrated with the platform. Finally, we also studied nowadays plant observations (volunteered geographic information) in more detail and reveal which region currently has most of Van Eyck’s plants/flowers.