The so-called Orléans Sale is a major touchstone in European provenance studies. This query drills down on the auction-event, getting to individual paintings and then providing information on their trajectories (chains of ownership) going forward.

Related entries: Getting from auction events to individual lots (0003).

Introduction

This SPARQL query was the basis for generating an alluvial flow chart that was used in the May 11, 2025 Getty Provenance Index Remodel launch event (see below. Credit: Giulia Taurino) A key difference between what is visualized there, versus this query, is that her visualiztion tracks all paintings, by all artists, involved in the sale (narrowing to three artists via post-SPARQL data processing). The query below focuses in particular on the works of Paolo Veronese (see Step Two).

Query

PREFIX crm: <http://www.cidoc-crm.org/cidoc-crm/>
PREFIX la: <https://linked.art/ns/terms/>
SELECT ?painting_label ?artist ?seller ?buyer ?timespan ?current_owner WHERE
{
# Step 1: Get all of the paintings from this auction event
  ?auction_of_lot ?p <https://data.getty.edu/provenance/64b214a8-9870-30a5-841b-46f3e2530202> .
  ?auction_of_lot rdfs:label ?auction_of_lot_label .
  ?auction_of_lot crm:P67i_is_referred_to_by ?stock_book .
  ?stock_book crm:P129_is_about ?painting .
  ?painting rdfs:label ?painting_label .
  OPTIONAL {?painting crm:P52_has_current_owner [rdfs:label ?current_owner] .} .
# Step 2: Find the paintings by Veronese
  ?painting crm:P108i_was_produced_by ?production_event .
  ?production_event crm:P9_consists_of ?production_sub_event .
  ?production_sub_event crm:P14_carried_out_by <https://data.getty.edu/provenance/defc6f67-9c9d-363f-919c-356d2ea8463d> .
# Step 3: Get the sale history of each painting
  ?acquisition_event crm:P24_transferred_title_of ?painting .
  ?acquisition_event rdfs:label ?acquisition_event_label .
  OPTIONAL {?acquisition_event crm:P22_transferred_title_to [rdfs:label ?buyer].} .
  OPTIONAL {?acquisition_event crm:P23_transferred_title_from [rdfs:label ?seller].} .
  ?acquisition_event crm:P4_has_time-span [crm:P82a_begin_of_the_begin ?timespan] .
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {FILTER CONTAINS (?acquisition_event_label, "Subsequent").}
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {FILTER CONTAINS (?seller, "Orléans").}
}
ORDER BY ?painting ?timespan

Commentary

There’s a trick to each step, so let’s go over them. The query illustrates a couple of principles.

Step One

1. Line 6: When drilling down on an auction-event—which is what the Orléans sale is—it is crucial that users understand the connection between auction-events, auctions-of-lots, and lots. Commentary on this relationship can be found in Getting from auction events to individual lots (0003). Reading 0003 will help to make some sense of what follows. However, in the current example, we follow a different path from auction-event to painting. This is because, while all sorts of data on the sale are contained at the auction-event, auction-of-lot, and lot levels, none of it relates directly to the painting itself. Information on paintings is found along a separate path, described below.
2. 'auction_events are made up of auction-of-lots (again, see 0003—in this case, these are described as “Private Contract Sale of Object Set” with a stock number and reference number appended to the end: see for example). The auction-of-lots have to be connected to paintings by stockbook entries (P67i_is_referred_to_by). It is the stockbooks that connect to paintings (P129_is_about). So instead of a single jump, one needs to jump across two resources to connect the Orleans auction to all of the associated paintings.

3. Line 6–7: “The Wobble.” This method employs “the Wobble,” which is just a fancy way of refering to a backwards-then-forwards movement from one graph to another. Consider the first element—the looking-backwards—to be equivalent to Arches’ “Related Resources.” Because we begin with a particular auction event and need to get back to the resources that refer to it, we put the Orléans Sale (in particular, its URI) into the object position in Line 6, and the putative auction of lots into the subject position. This produces a whole host of auction-of-lot activities in the results. The Wobble is completed via the subsequent step (Line 7), where those auction of lots become the basis for “wobbling” back in the other direction, hitting all of the resources specified by each auction of lot. In this case, we delimited this by using the predicate crm:P67i_is_referred_to_by, which limits us to entries in textual sources (in this case, stock books).

Step Two

1. Line 13–14: A few words about the relationship between paintings, production events, and production sub-events. One has to negotiate them in several steps, in order to get to artists. The relationship is as follows.

As you can see, the painting resource contains information, specified by P108i_was_produced_by, about a production-event. That activity contains multiple production sub-events, which link via P9_consists_of (Line 14). 2. Line 15: Once we get to production sub-event, we can access the artist via the P14_carried_out_by property. In this case, we insert the URI for Paolo Veronese. However, in principle, replacing that with a variable artist would return all artists.

Step Three

1. Line 17: We need to Wobble again, putting the painting into the object position and getting all of the subjects related through the P24_transferred_title_of property. In this case, each one ought to yield at least one acquisition_event.
2. Line 19–21: From there we complete the Wobble, getting information on buyers, sellers, and timespans, using the relevant properties.
3. Line 22–23: After this we have a series of filters to remove elements that simply do not work for our query. Anything with ‘subsequent’ in its title is duplicative of results we are already getting, and we do not need sales in which Orléans is the seller—since that is our starting point.