The delivery of the FuD (Forschungsnetzwerk und Datenbanksystem) software in fall 2015 by the Trier Center for Digital Humanities, enabled the LexArt team to enter in a new phase of the project.

Indeed, after spending the first two years of the project (2013-2015) elaborating a common methodology to handle the sources, and then studying these sources and major books in art theory, the team has now at its disposal an input tool. Following this delivery, a training phase dedicated to the FuD occured during winter 2015-2016. Thanks to regular exchanges, the Trier IT developers adapted the tool and the data modeling to our research. An important part of the books already studied has thus been inputted in the FuD, and even if the analysis of texts, the choice of extracts and the selection of “termes noyaux” within the texts, had already been done, their input represented a major task during this period. Among the sources integrated to the database, we can for example mention the ones by Bosse (with the exception of those devoted to engraving which will be inputted later on), by Pader, by Fréart de Chambray, a part of the Entretiens by Félibien, the writings of Audran, Testelin, Le Comte, Dupuy du Grez, or also a part of the ones by De Piles for the French corpus. Major Dutch sources have also been integrated such as Van Mander, Angel, De Grebber, Van Hoogstraten and De Lairesse. For the English corpus, many sources were as well added: the books by Sanderson, by Salmon, by Aglionby, by Smith and by Richardson. At last, in German the different editions of Sandrart have been inputted.

Besides, the input required a work of data harmonisation: nomenclatures had already been elaborated, but facing the software, the research team had to add or review some of them, and the checking and correction of data alongside the input have been imperative.

At the same time, the study of sources advanced up, thanks partly to the possibility of handling the texts direclty into the database. Books such as the conference regarding the expression of the passions by Le Brun, or La Réforme de la peinture by Restout, the Traité du Sublime by Boileau for French writings, and also The Gentlemans Exercise (…) by Peacham, l’Ars Pictoria : or an Academy Treating of Drawing, Painting (…) by Browne for the English one have for example been handled. The study of the impressive volumes by Goeree has been started for the Dutch corpus and the writing by Paul Fürst added to the German corpus.

Finally, the international symposium organised by the LexArt team in June 2016 (Paul-Valéry University – Montpellier) gathered art historians specialised in art theory of Early Modern times, leading to a deepening of our approaches on artistic vocabulary. An academic publication of the symposium proceedings is planed within the next months (in a paper version and with an online Open Access).