OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

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. 24 shown for “Photograph of girl mailing a letter” — 64 records examined, 7 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 01:18 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
Marble grave stele of a little girl

Marble grave stele of a little girl

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 450–440 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of girl mailing a letter

Photograph of girl mailing a letter

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Letter, by Camille Corot

The Letter

Camille Corot · ca. 1865

Public domainThe Met
Tintype of a unidentified young girl in a mailing card

Tintype of a unidentified young girl in a mailing card

Artist not stated in the record · early 20th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of a Man, Possibly a Self-Portrait, by Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)

Portrait of a Man, Possibly a Self-Portrait

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez) · ca. 1635

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carriers with handcarts

Photograph of letter carriers with handcarts

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1900

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Two Children Teasing a Cat, by Annibale Carracci

Two Children Teasing a Cat

Annibale Carracci

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Young Woman Peeling Apples, by Nicolaes Maes

Young Woman Peeling Apples

Nicolaes Maes · ca. 1655

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1947

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Armor of Mail and Plate

Armor of Mail and Plate

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th–first half of the 19th century

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier delivering mail

Photograph of letter carrier delivering mail

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Young Lady in 1866, by Edouard Manet

Young Lady in 1866

Edouard Manet · 1866

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of parcel post truck and carrier

Photograph of parcel post truck and carrier

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1950

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Letter, by Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca)

The Letter

Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca) · 1746

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1906

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?), by Edgar Degas

A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)

Edgar Degas · 1865

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier retrieving mail from mailbox

Photograph of letter carrier retrieving mail from mailbox

Artist not stated in the record · 1992

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Joan of Arc, by Jules Bastien-Lepage

Joan of Arc

Jules Bastien-Lepage · 1879

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of mail collection wagons

Photograph of mail collection wagons

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Marble grave stele of a young woman and servant

Marble grave stele of a young woman and servant

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 400–390 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Photograph of letter carrier collecting mail

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, by Fra Filippo Lippi

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement

Fra Filippo Lippi · ca. 1440

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of letter carrier delivering mail

Photograph of letter carrier delivering mail

Artist not stated in the record · 1908

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

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. 1289 matched · 24 examined · 4 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. 3885856 matched · 40 examined · 3 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-01 01:18 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.