Two archives, queried live.
Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 21 shown for “Alchemists” — 54 records examined, 26 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-08-28 21:44 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Alchemists
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770

The Alchemist
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1850

Alchemist and his Assistant
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770–75

(Illustration for Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám) The Vain Pursuit
Elihu Vedder, born New York City 1836-died Rome, Italy 1923 · 1883-1884

Theatre set with alchemist's workshop
Anonymous, German, 19th century · 19th century (?)

Paracelsus
Artist not stated in the record

Hieronymus Scotti, Magician and Alchemist
Antonio Abondio · 1580

LE CHIMISTE
Hormann

The Alchemist
Pieter Bruegel the Elder · after 1558

LE CHIMISTE
Artist not stated in the record

Standing cup with cover
Matthäus Baur II · 1695–1700

SPEC FEBRIFUG M
Artist not stated in the record · 17th-18th century

Vessel with Women and Goats
Paul Gauguin · ca. 1887–89

SPEC DIATART M
Artist not stated in the record · 17th-18th century

The Alchemist, from "The Songs of Béranger"
Alfred Johannot · 1829

ELIX ACID DIPP
Artist not stated in the record · 18th century

Wide Show-Thaler
Artist not stated in the record · 1541

Mortar
Artist not stated in the record · 1477

Vase
Meissen Manufactory · ca. 1713–20

Mortar and Pestle made for Abu Bakr 'Ali Malikzad al-Tabrizi
Artist not stated in the record · late 12th–early 13th century

Emile Gauguin (1874–1955), the artist's son
Paul Gauguin · ca. 1877–78
Where these records came from.
Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.
- The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field:
isPublicDomain. 27 matched · 24 examined · 5 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown - Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field:
content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 30 matched · 30 examined · 21 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.9 shown
These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-28 21:44 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.
Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.
An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.