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. 23 shown for “Via crucis - Station III, He Falls Beneath the Cross the First Time” — 51 records examined, 13 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-04 07:36 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment
Jan van Eyck · ca. 1436–38

Via crucis - Station III, He Falls Beneath the Cross the First Time
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

The Adoration of the Magi
Joos van Wassenhove · 1472–74

Via crucis - Station VII, He Falls Beneath the Cross the Second Time
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

The Flagellation
Master of the Berswordt Altar · ca. 1400

Via crucis - Station IX, He Falls Beneath the Cross the Third Time
Artist not stated in the record · 1748

The Birth of the Virgin
Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini) · 1467

Via crucis - Station II, He Takes the Cross on His Shoulders
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi) · ca. 1524–26

Via crucis - Station V, Simon of Cyrene Helps Him to Carry the Cross
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

Heroic Landscape with Rainbow
Joseph Anton Koch · 1824

Via crucis - Station IV, He Meets His Mother
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius
Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) · ca. 1500

Frontispiece of the Via crucis (Stations of the Cross)
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

The Holy Family
Joos van Cleve · ca. 1512–13

Via crucis - Station XI, Jesus Nailed to the Cross
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

Salvator Mundi
Hans Memling · 1480–85

Via crucis - Station VIII, He Consoles the Weeping Women
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

Abner's Messenger before David; The Queen of Sheba Bringing Gifts to Solomon; The Annunciation
Master of the Saint Barbara Legend · ca. 1480

Via crucis - Station I, Jesus Condemned to Death
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

Chōmeiji Temple Pilgrimage Mandala
Artist not stated in the record · second quarter 16th century

Via crucis - Station VI, Saint Veronica Wipes His Face
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1749

North American P-51C, "Excalibur III"
North American Aircraft Company · 1944
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. 11 matched · 11 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.11 shown - Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field:
content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1328072 matched · 40 examined · 13 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 2026-09-04 07:36 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.