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. 12 shown for “Portrait of a cleric” — 40 records examined, 6 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-05 10:55 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.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Portrait of Joannes Malderus, Bishop of Antwerp

Portrait of Joannes Malderus, Bishop of Antwerp

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Antonius Perrenot, Cardinal Granvellan, Archbishop of Mechlin

Portrait of Antonius Perrenot, Cardinal Granvellan, Archbishop of Mechlin

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Jacobus Boonan, Archbishop of Mechlin

Portrait of Jacobus Boonan, Archbishop of Mechlin

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Josephi Bergaigne, Bishop of Sylva

Portrait of Josephi Bergaigne, Bishop of Sylva

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Mathias Hovius, Archbishop of Mechlin

Portrait of Mathias Hovius, Archbishop of Mechlin

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Joannes Miraeus, Bishop of Antwerp

Portrait of Joannes Miraeus, Bishop of Antwerp

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Nicolaus Zoesius, Bishop of Sylva

Portrait of Nicolaus Zoesius, Bishop of Sylva

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait Of Joannes Hauchinus, Bishop of Mechlin

Portrait Of Joannes Hauchinus, Bishop of Mechlin

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Caspar Nemins, Bishop of Antwerp

Portrait of Caspar Nemins, Bishop of Antwerp

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Guillemus de Berges, Bishop of Antwerp

Portrait of Guillemus de Berges, Bishop of Antwerp

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Ferndinandus de Beughem, Bishop of Antwerp

Portrait of Ferndinandus de Beughem, Bishop of Antwerp

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of Thomas Philippus, Archbishop of Mechlin

Portrait of Thomas Philippus, Archbishop of Mechlin

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1700-1730

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3855859 matched · 40 examined · 6 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 2026-09-05 10:55 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.