Representation and retrieval of paintings based on art history concepts

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for the retrieval of paintings using concepts defined in the field of art and design. These concepts are organized into meta and application-specific layers in the system. Concepts of the meta-layer take into account the visual attributes of the paintings, and their manipulations, which infer abstract attributes that influence the interpretation of the paintings by the observers. The concepts of the application-specific layer are built above the meta- layer. They represent art categories that are widely used by general users for navigating the collections of paintings. Potentially, the usage of artistic concepts for annotation supports a wider query base making the retrieval much more powerful.