Viewsari · Ontology

Viewsari Ontology

Formal vocabulary for the Viewsari Knowledge Graph — a provenance-aware knowledge graph built from Giorgio Vasari's Le Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (1568).

OWL / RDF-XML CC BY 4.0 viewsari namespace Ontology Documentation →

Overview

The ontology's central design claim is that knowledge extracted from interpretive historical texts is not merely discovered but constructed — and that the knowledge graph must therefore model the construction process itself, not only its output. Every extracted entity and every mention annotation is traceable, via typed PROV-O activities, to the paragraph it came from, the software that produced it, and the prompt template or index resource that guided extraction.

The ontology is developed within the eXtreme Design (XD) methodology and has been validated iteratively against a set of 39 competency questions derived from domain expert interviews with art historians, digital humanities researchers, and data engineers.

Ontology Graph

Interactive visualization of the Viewsari ontology class hierarchy and relationships. Drag nodes to rearrange, scroll to zoom, click a node for details.

Bibliographic

Structural

Content / Entity

Annotation

Provenance

Imported

Three-layer Architecture

Bibliographic Layer

Models the intellectual and digital structure of The Lives following the FRBR framework as implemented in FaBiO.

fabio:Work → viewsari:le_vite (Vasari's abstract work) → viewsari:edition (1568 Giunti edition) → viewsari:translation (1912 Du Vere English translation) → viewsari:volume (one of ten volumes) → viewsari:biography (one artist's life) → viewsari:page (a single printed page)

Expression class	Manifestation class	Superclass
`viewsari:volume`	`viewsari:volume_web_representation`	`fabio:WebSite`
`viewsari:biography`	`viewsari:biography_web_representation`	`fabio:WebPage`
`viewsari:page`	`viewsari:page_web_representation`	`fabio:WebPage`

Structural Layer

Models the document hierarchy below the page level, using DoCO vocabulary for paragraph-level content and the W3C Web Annotation Ontology for anchoring mentions to exact character positions.

doco:Paragraph — carries viewsari:hasText, viewsari:hasLengthInCharacters, viewsari:hasStartPage, and viewsari:hasEndPage
doco:TextChunk — a surface-form span within a paragraph, linked via oa:hasSelector
doco:TextPositionSelector — character-level oa:start / oa:end offsets

Content Layer

Models the extracted entities and their mention evidence.

Extracted Entities

Class	Description
`viewsari:person`	Historical individual from the Index of Names
`viewsari:artwork`	Creative work mentioned in the text
`viewsari:location`	Geographical place
`viewsari:organization`	Guild, order, academy, or other institution
`viewsari:cooccurrence`	Pairwise joint appearance of two entities in one paragraph

Mention Taxonomy

viewsari:mention ├── viewsari:explicit_mention │ └── viewsari:explicit_artwork_mention ├── viewsari:implicit_mention │ └── viewsari:implicit_artwork_mention ├── viewsari:coreferent └── viewsari:generic_mention

Extraction Activities

Class	Pipeline stage
`viewsari:named_entity_recognition`	NER and coreference resolution over the Index of Names and paragraphs
`viewsari:cooccurrence_analysis`	Pairwise co-occurrence extraction
`viewsari:entity_linking`	LLM-guided candidate ranking and Wikidata linking

Viewsari-defined Properties

Object Properties

Property	Domain	Range	Description
`viewsari:hasStartPage`	`doco:Paragraph`	`viewsari:page_web_representation`	First printed page of a paragraph
`viewsari:hasEndPage`	`doco:Paragraph`	`viewsari:page_web_representation`	Last printed page of a paragraph
`viewsari:isBasedOn`	`viewsari:translation`	`viewsari:edition`	Derivation of a translation from its source edition
`viewsari:inParagraph`	`viewsari:extracted_content`	`doco:Paragraph`	Anchors a co-occurrence to its source paragraph
`viewsari:involves`	`viewsari:cooccurrence`	`viewsari:extracted_content`	Links a co-occurrence to a participating entity (min. cardinality 2)

Datatype Properties

Property	Domain	Range	Description
`viewsari:hasText`	`doco:Paragraph`	`xsd:string`	Full normalized paragraph text
`viewsari:hasLengthInCharacters`	`doco:Paragraph`	`xsd:nonNegativeInteger`	Character count of the merged paragraph

Imported Vocabularies

Prefix	Namespace	Used for
`fabio`	`http://purl.org/spar/fabio/`	FRBR-aligned bibliographic types
`doco`	`http://purl.org/spar/doco/`	Document component types
`prov`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#`	Extraction provenance
`oa`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#`	Web Annotation (mentions, selectors)
`frbr`	`http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#`	Part-of and embodiment relations
`dct`	`http://purl.org/dc/terms/`	Relation subproperties

Fixed Individuals

The ontology defines four named individuals that serve as the stable bibliographic root nodes of the knowledge graph.

Individual	Type	Description
`viewsari:le_vite`	`fabio:Work`	The abstract intellectual work by Vasari (wd:Q1645493)
`viewsari:le_vite_1568`	`viewsari:edition`	The 1568 Giunti edition
`viewsari:the_lives_1568`	`viewsari:translation`	The 1912 Du Vere English translation
`viewsari:the_lives_gutenberg_version`	`fabio:ManifestationCollection`	The Project Gutenberg web publication of the Du Vere translation

Provenance Chain

The full provenance chain from a raw paragraph to a canonical entity can be traversed in SPARQL in at most two prov:wasGeneratedBy hops:

doco:Paragraph ← prov:used ← viewsari:named_entity_recognition (activity) → prov:wasGeneratedBy → viewsari:mention (annotation) ↓ prov:used (by coref activity) viewsari:cooccurrence_analysis / named_entity_recognition → prov:wasGeneratedBy → viewsari:person / artwork / cooccurrence

Every triple in the knowledge graph is traceable to a documented computational activity and ultimately to a specific paragraph in a specific volume of the Du Vere edition.

Competency Question Catalog

The ontology was designed and validated against a catalog of competency questions (CQs) derived from user stories across two requirements engineering phases, elicited from four personas.

Phase I 29 ontology-focused CQs from 32 user stories Phase II 41 extended CQs covering extraction provenance, bibliographic depth, and epistemic modeling

Persona	Role
Elena Rossi	Art historian researcher
Nazeera Marfi	Professor of digital art history
Aaron Warner	Computer scientist / knowledge engineer
John Saffron	Art history student

Phase I Competency Questions

▶ Cluster 1 — Artists and Co-occurrences 8

CQI.1Who co-occurred with whom in The Lives?Elena Rossi

CQI.2Did artist X co-occur with artist Y?Elena Rossi

CQI.3Which artists are mentioned together in the same passage?Elena Rossi

CQI.4Where in the text did artists X and Y co-occur? (In which paragraph, biography, volume?)Elena Rossi

CQI.5How frequently do two given artists co-occur across the entire corpus?Elena Rossi

CQI.6Which artists have the highest co-occurrence frequency with artist X?Elena Rossi

CQI.7What is the pointwise mutual information (PMI) score for the co-occurrence of artists X and Y?Aaron Warner

CQI.8What is the network centrality of artist X in the co-occurrence network?Aaron Warner

▶ Live example from Viewsari annotations

Co-occurrence

Cimabue, Giovanni and Giotto — Volume 1, Paragraph 13

“But to return to Cimabue: Giotto, truly, obscured his fame not otherwise than as a great light does the splendour of one much less… yet Giotto, his pupil, moved by laudable ambition and assisted by Heaven and by nature…”

KG Triple

viewsari:cooccurrence_cim-gio_1 viewsari:involves viewsari:cimabue-giovanni, viewsari:giotto

Source

View in annotation viewer →

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX vkb: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/kb/> # CQI.1-4: Who co-occurred with Giotto, and where? SELECT ?cooc_label ?person1 ?person2 WHERE { ?cooc a viewsari:0001025 . ?cooc rdfs:label ?cooc_label . ?cooc viewsari:involves ?p1, ?p2 . ?p1 rdfs:label ?person1 . ?p2 rdfs:label ?person2 . FILTER(CONTAINS(?person1, "Giotto") || CONTAINS(?person2, "Giotto")) FILTER(STR(?p1) < STR(?p2)) } ORDER BY ?cooc_label LIMIT 10

▶ Cluster 2 — Persons and Attributes 5

CQI.9What are the birth and death dates of person X?Elena Rossi

CQI.10Which persons mentioned in The Lives are identified as artists?Elena Rossi

CQI.11Which persons mentioned in The Lives are not artists (e.g., patrons, clergy, scholars)?Elena Rossi

CQI.12In which biography (biographies) does person X appear?John Saffron

CQI.13Is person X linked to an external authority record (e.g., Wikidata)?Aaron Warner

▶ Cluster 3 — Artworks, Locations, and Entities 5

CQI.14Which artworks are mentioned in the biography of artist X?Elena Rossi

CQI.15Which locations are associated with artist X?Elena Rossi

CQI.16Which artworks were created in location L?Elena Rossi

CQI.17Can students explore artist collaborations on a geographical map?Nazeera Marfi

CQI.18Where is location X located on a map?John Saffron

▶ Live example — Artworks in Giotto's biography (Para. 96)

Paragraph 96 contains 36 artwork mentions across all types

3 explicit 17 implicit 12 coreferent 4 generic

Explicit artwork with Wikidata link

explicit Q799026 “the Badia of Florence” → wd:Q799026

Implicit artwork with Wikidata link

implicit Q117842108 “a Madonna receiving the Annunciation” → wd:Q117842108

Implicit artwork — Out-of-Knowledge-Base

implicit OOKB “the chapel of the high-altar in the Badia of Florence” — no Wikidata match

Coreferent chain

coref “wherein” (m_0006) → refers_to → “the chapel of the high-altar” (m_0004)

Source

View paragraph 96 in annotation viewer →

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> # CQI.14: Which artworks are mentioned in Giotto's biography? SELECT ?artwork ?label ?wikidata WHERE { ?artwork a viewsari:0001012 . ?artwork rdfs:label ?label . OPTIONAL { ?artwork owl:sameAs ?wikidata . } FILTER(STRSTARTS(STR(?artwork), "https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/kb/giotto_")) } ORDER BY ?label LIMIT 15

▶ Cluster 4 — Bibliographic and Provenance 5

CQI.19Which paragraph and page in The Lives is the source of co-occurrence C?Elena Rossi

CQI.20Which volume of The Lives contains the biography of artist X?John Saffron

CQI.21What edition or translation of The Lives was used for extracting a given co-occurrence?Elena Rossi

CQI.22What is the original text snippet associated with co-occurrence C?Elena Rossi

CQI.23What licence is provided by the Viewsari dataset and where can the original source text be found?Aaron Warner

▶ Live example — Bibliographic chain for a co-occurrence

Tracing co-occurrence to source

viewsari:cooccurrence_cim-gio_1
→ viewsari:inParagraph → viewsari:the_lives_1568_volume-1_paragraph-13
→ dct:isPartOf → viewsari:the_lives_1568_volume-1_cimabue-bio_page_7
→ frbr:isPartOf → viewsari:the_lives_1568_volume-1_cimabue-bio
→ frbr:isPartOf → viewsari:the_lives_1568_volume-1
→ frbr:isPartOf → viewsari:the_lives_1568 (Du Vere translation)
→ viewsari:isBasedOn → viewsari:le_vite_1568 (Giunti edition)

Original text snippet

“But to return to Cimabue: Giotto, truly, obscured his fame not otherwise than as a great light does the splendour of one much less…”

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX vkb: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/kb/> PREFIX frbr: <http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#> PREFIX doco: <http://purl.org/spar/doco/> # CQI.19-21: Trace bibliographic chain from paragraph to edition SELECT ?para ?para_label ?bio ?bio_label ?vol ?vol_label WHERE { ?para a doco:Paragraph . ?para rdfs:label ?para_label . FILTER(CONTAINS(?para_label, "Vol. 1, Paragraph 13")) ?para frbr:isPartOf ?bio . ?bio a viewsari:0001008 . ?bio rdfs:label ?bio_label . ?bio frbr:isPartOf ?vol . ?vol a viewsari:0001006 . ?vol rdfs:label ?vol_label . }

▶ Cluster 5 — Search and Data Reuse 6

CQI.24How can I execute semantic searches over the knowledge graph?Aaron Warner

CQI.25How can I reuse the Viewsari data in my own project, and in what form can it be shared?Nazeera Marfi

CQI.26Is there a SPARQL endpoint or an RDF dump available?Aaron Warner

CQI.27Which external resources (ontologies, authority data) were used in constructing the knowledge graph?Aaron Warner

CQI.28Which authority data (e.g., Wikidata, Iconclass) is connected to the resources?Elena Rossi

CQI.29How can my students reuse data in the project course, and can the visualizations be modified and customized?Nazeera Marfi

Phase II Extended Competency Questions

▶ Cluster 1 — Artists, Collaborations, and Relationships 5

CQII.1What is the difference between a statistical co-occurrence and an explicitly typed relationship between two artists in the knowledge graph?Aaron Warner

CQII.2How can I distinguish between different types of artist associations (statistical co-occurrence vs. explicit relationships) in order to build accurate computational models?Aaron Warner

CQII.3Which artists have both a statistical co-occurrence and an explicit typed relationship with artist X?Elena Rossi

CQII.4What is the Dice coefficient for the co-occurrence of artists X and Y, and how does it compare to the PMI score?Aaron Warner

CQII.5How do I explore relationships between Renaissance artists, artworks, historical events, or locations so that I can identify patterns and trends for research or in a course?Nazeera Marfi

▶ Cluster 2 — Artworks 5

CQII.6Which artworks are explicitly named in the biography of artist X, and which are described only implicitly?Elena Rossi

CQII.7What is the surface form by which artwork A is referred to in paragraph P, and is it an explicit, implicit, or coreferential mention?Elena Rossi

CQII.8Which artworks in the knowledge graph are classified as out-of-knowledge-base (OOKB) entities — i.e., have no match in Wikidata?Aaron Warner

CQII.9Which artworks co-occur with a specific artist in a particular volume, and what are the source paragraphs?Elena Rossi

CQII.10Can I explore how artworks reflect collaborative effects, such as shared locations or artistic styles?Nazeera Marfi

▶ Live example — Explicit vs. implicit artwork mentions in S. Croce

Same church, different mention types (Giotto bio, Para. 96)

explicit “S. Croce” (m_0012) → wd:Q123258826

coref “the said church” (m_0021) → refers_to m_0012

coref “Church of S. Croce” (m_0025) → refers_to m_0012

OOKB artworks inside S. Croce

OOKB “the first of the three, which is that of Messer Ridolfo de' Bardi… life of S. Francis”

OOKB “the next, which is that of the family of Peruzzi… two stories from the life of S. John the Baptist”

Cross-biography reference

The same entity wd:Q1479873 (Church of S. Cecilia) appears in Giotto's, Cimabue's, and Cavallini's biographies — linked via shared Wikidata QID.

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> # CQII.6-8: Explicit vs. implicit, OOKB artworks SELECT ?artwork ?label ?type WHERE { ?artwork a viewsari:0001012 . ?artwork rdfs:label ?label . FILTER(CONTAINS(LCASE(?label), "croce")) OPTIONAL { ?artwork owl:sameAs ?wd . } BIND(IF(BOUND(?wd), "Wikidata-linked", "OOKB") AS ?type) } ORDER BY ?label LIMIT 15

▶ Cluster 3 — Locations 4

CQII.11Which locations are mentioned in co-occurrences involving artist X?Elena Rossi

CQII.12Which artists were active in location L according to The Lives?Elena Rossi

CQII.13Is location L linked to an external authority record (e.g., Wikidata, GeoNames)?Aaron Warner

CQII.14Can students explore artist collaborations on a geographical map, filtered by location?Nazeera Marfi

▶ Cluster 4 — Historical Events 4

CQII.15Which historical events are associated with artist X in the knowledge graph?Elena Rossi

CQII.16Which artworks were commissioned or destroyed as part of a specific historical event E?Elena Rossi

CQII.17How can I identify cross-disciplinary connections between Renaissance art and other historical or cultural phenomena using the knowledge graph?Nazeera Marfi

CQII.18Can information about historical events be enriched from external sources such as Wikidata, and if so, which properties are aligned?Aaron Warner

▶ Cluster 5 — Evidence and Bibliographic Information 6

CQII.19How can I distinguish between work-level, expression-level, and manifestation-level bibliographic metadata in order to properly cite and attribute sources?Elena Rossi

CQII.20Which edition and translation of The Lives is the source of a given extracted entity or co-occurrence?Elena Rossi

CQII.21What is the direct web URL to the paragraph in the Project Gutenberg edition from which entity E or co-occurrence C was extracted?Elena Rossi

CQII.22Is the extracted information derived from Du Vere's 1912 English translation, the 1568 Italian edition, or another version?Elena Rossi

CQII.23How does the choice of translation (Du Vere's English vs. the original Italian) affect the entities and co-occurrences that appear in the knowledge graph?Elena Rossi

CQII.24For co-occurrences involving artist X, can I compare the English translation's web manifestation with the Italian edition's web manifestation?Elena Rossi

▶ Live example — FRBR bibliographic levels for “a Madonna receiving the Annunciation”

The mention

implicit Q117842108 “a Madonna receiving the Annunciation” (m_0007, Giotto bio, Para. 96)

FRBR chain — from mention to original Work

              Manifestation · viewsari:the_lives_gutenberg_version (fabio:ManifestationCollection)

                ↑ frbr:hasEmbodiment

              Expression · viewsari:the_lives_1568 (viewsari:translation) — Du Vere, 1912 English

                ↑ viewsari:isBasedOn

              Expression · viewsari:le_vite_1568 (viewsari:edition) — Giunti, 1568 Italian

                ↑ frbr:realizationOf

              Work · viewsari:le_vite (fabio:Work) — wd:Q1645493

Answer to CQII.22

All extracted information in the current Viewsari KG derives from Du Vere's 1912 English translation (viewsari:the_lives_1568), which in turn viewsari:isBasedOn the 1568 Giunti Italian edition. The FRBR distinction lets queries target either level.

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX frbr: <http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#> # CQII.22: Trace the FRBR chain for all volumes SELECT ?vol ?vol_label ?edition ?ed_label WHERE { ?vol a viewsari:0001006 . ?vol rdfs:label ?vol_label . ?vol frbr:isPartOf ?edition . ?edition rdfs:label ?ed_label . } ORDER BY ?vol_label LIMIT 10

▶ Cluster 6 — Linked Data Enrichment 4

CQII.25Which entities in the knowledge graph are linked to Wikidata, and what properties are mapped?Aaron Warner

CQII.26Which entities are classified as OOKB, meaning they have no matching entry in Wikidata or other authority sources?Aaron Warner

CQII.27Can I perform a federated SPARQL query combining Viewsari data with an external endpoint (e.g., Wikidata)?Aaron Warner

CQII.28How can I use Viewsari as a research tool for cross-disciplinary research that connects findings from The Lives to broader historical or cultural knowledge?Nazeera Marfi

▶ Live example — Wikidata-linked vs. OOKB entities across the corpus

Corpus-wide statistics (16 annotated biographies, 2,438 mentions)

Biography	Mentions	Wikidata-linked	OOKB
Michelangelo	395	59 (15%)	57 (14%)
Ghirlandaio	235	53 (23%)	64 (27%)
Giotto	203	44 (22%)	52 (26%)
Botticelli	110	41 (37%)	16 (15%)
Pollaiuolo	127	12 (9%)	52 (41%)

Cross-biography entity: S. Maria Novella (wd:Q51175)

Appears in 6 biographies: Alberti, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Cimabue, Ghirlandaio, Lippi — all linked to the same Wikidata QID via owl:sameAs, enabling federated queries.

Cross-biography entity: S. Maria del Fiore (wd:Q191739)

Appears in 5 biographies: Brunelleschi, Cimabue, Ghirlandaio, Giotto, Verrocchio.

OOKB challenge

Pollaiuolo's biography has the highest OOKB rate (41%) — many artworks described in The Lives have no canonical Wikidata entry, receiving Viewsari-internal IRIs instead (e.g., viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/kb/1.0#f19bb56f…).

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> # CQII.25-26: Wikidata-linked vs. OOKB entities SELECT (COUNT(?wd_art) AS ?wikidata_linked) (COUNT(?all_art) - COUNT(?wd_art) AS ?ookb) (COUNT(?all_art) AS ?total) WHERE { ?all_art a viewsari:0001012 . OPTIONAL { ?all_art owl:sameAs ?wd . BIND(?all_art AS ?wd_art) } }

▶ Cluster 7 — User Interaction and Exploration 5

CQII.29How can I apply FAIR principles to the Viewsari data to bring it into my own project and share it with my students?Nazeera Marfi

CQII.30How can I use Viewsari as an interactive visualization platform in my lectures to communicate complex relationships and historical patterns?Nazeera Marfi

CQII.31Can I conduct a proof-of-concept project reusing Viewsari as a system, finding its working concept applicable to my own research?Nazeera Marfi

CQII.32How can I integrate Viewsari into my teaching curriculum?Nazeera Marfi

CQII.33How can I explore relationships between artists, artworks, or locations so that I can identify trends and accumulations of collaborations in a certain city or place?John Saffron

▶ Cluster 8 — Extraction Provenance and Epistemic Modeling 8

CQII.34Which extraction activity (NER run, LLM prompt run) generated entity E, and what software agent was used?Aaron Warner

CQII.35What was the prompt template used in the extraction run that produced entity E?Aaron Warner

CQII.36Which entities were extracted by a statistical method (co-occurrence / NER) versus a generative LLM-based method?Aaron Warner

CQII.37What model version and timestamp are associated with extraction run R?Aaron Warner

CQII.38How are implicit entity mentions distinguished from explicit ones in the ontology, and can I query them separately?Aaron Warner

CQII.39For a given extraction result, can I trace back the provenance chain from the entity through the annotation, the paragraph, the page, the volume, and the translation to the original work?Elena Rossi

CQII.40Does the knowledge graph allow me to assess whether a claimed relationship between two artists is supported by explicit textual evidence, an implicit inference, or purely statistical co-occurrence?Elena Rossi

CQII.41How does the ontology represent the epistemic weight of a co-occurrence derived from PMI compared to an implicit mention inferred by an LLM?Aaron Warner

▶ Live example — Full provenance chain for an implicit mention

Mention

implicit Q3907498 “the panel on the high-altar of the said chapel” (m_0008, Giotto bio, Para. 96)

Provenance chain

              viewsari:obliquer_run_1 (prov:Activity · NER)

                → prov:used → doco:Paragraph_96

                → prov:wasGeneratedBy → viewsari:m_0008 (implicit_artwork_mention)

                  → oa:hasTarget → doco:TextChunk [start:1487, end:1530]

                  → oa:hasBody → viewsari:entity_0006

              viewsari:entity_linking_run_1 (prov:Activity · EL)

                → prov:wasGeneratedBy → viewsari:entity_0006

                → owl:sameAs → wd:Q3907498 (Polittico Baroncelli)

Coreferent mentions pointing to this entity

coref “which” (m_0010) → refers_to m_0008
coref “the work” (m_0011) → refers_to m_0008

show query

PREFIX viewsari: <https://viewsari.ise.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ontology/#> PREFIX prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> PREFIX oa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#> # CQII.34-39: Provenance chain — which activities generated entities? SELECT ?activity ?activity_label (COUNT(?entity) AS ?generated) WHERE { ?activity a prov:Activity . ?activity rdfs:label ?activity_label . ?entity prov:wasGeneratedBy ?activity . } GROUP BY ?activity ?activity_label ORDER BY DESC(?generated)

Coverage Summary

#ClusterPhase IPhase IITotal 1Artists, collaborations, and relationships8513 2Persons and attributes5—5 3Artworks358 4Locations448 5Historical events—44 6Evidence and bibliographic information5611 7Linked data enrichment347 8User interaction and exploration459 9Extraction provenance and epistemic modeling—88 Total294170+

Some CQs address multiple clusters. Phase II includes additional sub-questions generated via OntoChat from extended user stories.

Design Decisions

Co-occurrence as a first-class entity

Co-occurrences are modelled as viewsari:cooccurrence instances rather than annotated edges, following the Participation Ontology Design Pattern. This allows provenance metadata, paragraph anchoring, and statistical scores (e.g., PMI) to be attached directly to the co-occurrence node.

Dual OA / PROV typing of mentions

viewsari:mention is a subclass of both oa:Annotation and prov:Entity. This reflects the dual role of every mention as a scholarly annotation grounded in the source text and as the output of a documented computational process.

Ambiguity preserved, not collapsed

Where the Index of Names records two plausible identities for the same set of surface forms using a pipe separator, both identities are instantiated as separate entities. This makes interpretive ambiguity a structural feature of the graph rather than a preprocessing artefact.

Biography-bounded coreference

Coreference arcs are never drawn across biography boundaries. Cross-biography identity is established via shared owl:sameAs links to Wikidata QIDs, not through coreferential annotation.

Citation

Ondraszek, S. R. (2026). Modeling Interpretation in the Age of Generative AI: Semantic Technologies for Digital Humanities Research Based on Giorgio Vasari's The Lives. Doctoral dissertation, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology / FIZ Karlsruhe.

Related Resources