Search help

Every page of the art database contains a full text search field “Search database” where it is possible to enter search words to search the contents of the art database for artworks and cultural objects.

It is also possible to use the search filters on the page Contents of the Art Database / Search for objects to select one or several museums or collections, periods, motifs, restitution statuses, art and cultural object categories and/or type of provenance. (At low screen resolutions, for a better overview only the filter “Category“ is displayed.)

You can change the sort order of the list of results produced by your search by clicking the captions of its columns ("Picture", "Title", "Artist" and "Museum"). If one of these captions is clicked, the results will be sorted according to the content of its column. If you click the same caption again, the results will appear in reverse sort order.

Full text search

The full text search allows you to search all of the data provided in the detailed view of the artworks or cultural objects using one or several words or parts of words.

Words or parts of words that are entered into the full text search field also produce results if they appear in the art database in different database fields related to the same artwork or cultural object. (For example, a search for “bronze biederm fores a f” could produce a bronze sculpture by an artist by the name of “Francis Anthony Forester” from the period “Biedermeier/Empire”).

You can enter either one word or part of a word, or several words/parts of words separated by a space in the full text search field. The search function does not take capitalizations into account. (For example an artwork called “Spring and Summer” could be retrieved by searching for “Spring” or for “rin MER”.)

Search terms entered into the full text search field also generate results that are entered in the database in a different order or with a similar spelling. (For example, a search for “arch lauter” would produce the result “Erläuterung architektonischer Begriffe”.) In particular, this function makes it possible for standard characters to be used in place of special characters such as umlauts (e.g. “Durer” instead of “Dürer”).

Filters

At the top of the page Contents of the Art Database / Search for objects you can click on “Show filters” to view the different search filters available.

Under the filter “Category” it is possible to select search criteria in several sub-categories, enabling you to refine your search. In this case, the individual options are preceded by a “plus” symbol. Clicking on the plus causes the sub-categories to appear, enabling the search to be confined to one or more sub-categories. (For example, when you click on the option “Prints”, the sub-categories “Engravings”, “Etchings” etc. appear, and a click on the option “Engravings” produces its sub-categories “Copper engravings”, “Steel engravings” etc.)

If several search terms are selected within the same filter (e.g. “Books and other printed items” and “Postage stamps” in the search filter “Category” or both “15th century” and “Baroque” in the search filter “Period”), the search is extended to increase the number of results. In order to appear in the results list it suffices for an object to be attributed just one of these search criteria.

If a number of filters are combined (e.g. the search term “Books and other printed items” is selected in the filter “Category” and “Baroque” in the filter “Period”), this refines the search and reduces the number of results. Every single artwork or cultural object in the results list generated by this sort of search has been found by all of the selected filters.

If one or more filters are combined with a full text search (e.g. with “Books and other printed items” selected in the filter “Category” and the word “head” entered in the full text search field), the search will also be refined in order to reduce the number of results. Every single artwork or cultural object in the results list generated by this sort of search has been found by both the full text search and by all of the selected filters. This enables you to refine a full text search that has produced a large number of results with the aid of the filters displayed at the top of the results list.