An Ontology for the Iconographic Sources of La Divina Commedia

In recent years, scholars have been very interested in the relationship between Dante Alighieri and the figurative arts, leading the way to new research paths that have enriched this topic and made it much more complex and interesting. Currently, this knowledge is disseminated on several books and research papers, making it unmanageable to systematically overview the literary and artistic background of Dante and to gain a sound understanding of how this background was gradually constructed over time. We present OntoComedySources, an ontology for the primary sources of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, both literary and iconographic, with a focus on the latter. We developed our ontology using the Web Ontology Language 2 (OWL 2), according also to several foundational ontologies widely used in the ambit of the digital humanities, such as the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) and the Semantic Publishing and Referencing Ontologies (SPAR Ontologies). Our main goal is to support academics in developing and consulting a digital encyclopedia of La Divina Commedia’s primary sources. In addition, we expect that OntoComedySources can easily be adapted and extended to other works and other authors.