As the project is now entering in its last phase, the research team dedicated this year to the study of the remaining and major books of art theory and to their input in the FuD software (Forschungsnetzwerk und Datenbanksystem).
Among these books, we can for example mention The Mysteryes of Nature and Art by John Bate or The Excellency of the Pen and Pencil (anonymous) which now complete the English corpus, while Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic by Preissler has been added to the German corpus. The French and Dutch corpus which both required more work and have been noticeably enriched. Apart from Goeree’s writings which have been finished, Junius’ texts, but also Beurs’ and Lairesse’s have all been integrated into the database for the Dutch part. For the French one, L’art de peinture by Dufresnoy, including the Remarques of De Piles was added to the corpus of the second half of the seventeenth century, just like the Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes by Perrault or the Traite de Mignature by Boutet. For the first half of the eighteenth century, the books of Coypel, Du Bos, Batteux, La Font de Saint-Yenne, but also the Lettres and Réflexions by Baillet de Saint-Julien, were all analyzed and then input into the FuD. Moreover, the study of translated editions of writings by Vinci (Italian, German, English), De Piles (English, Dutch), Junius (English, Latin), Dufresnoy (German, English, Dutch), Du Bos (Dutch), Le Comte (Dutch), Goeree (German), Lairesse (English, German) – all published until 1750 – has been lead to its end.
Besides, the team proceeded to the translation of the « termes noyaux » – or words belonging to the artistic vocabulary – to ensure the concordance between terms in the different languages (English, German, Dutch and French) and the future navigation between these languages and terms into the database.
Alongside to this research work, the synthesis work has also begun during this year 2016-2017. In the wake of the international symposium which took place in Montpellier in June 2016, a study day gathering this time lectures from the LexArt team and from its Scientific Comittee, has been organized on January 25 2017 at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA – Paris). The publication of the proceedings of these two academic events has immediately been launched: papers of all contributors were collected and submitted to a review panel during winter 2016-2017. After the proofreading and correction phase, the selected articles were handed to the Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée (PULM) in Spring 2017. This publication (in paper version but also available online in open access) is now imminent and will of course be announced on our website.
Finally, thanks to the development of a temporary tool or « export tool » which allows us to browse into the data already input, the writing of the Dictionary which constitutes the completion of our researches, has also been started and is still one of our main task during this year 2017-2018. Currently under finalization, this Dictionary will first be published in French, and in a second time in English, all this by the PULM and still with a paper version and online one, available in open access.
The database and final tool designed for the academic community and developed by the the Center for Digital Humanities of Trier University (Germany) is also under completion and will be launched online after a test phase at the beginning of 2018.
