# Why Some Objects Cannot Be Illustrated > Of 35 objects this archive has researched but does not publish, 27 already carry licensed photographs. The binding constraint is proving that a photograph shows that object, not clearing the rights to it. > The Study - 2026-08-24 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/why-some-objects-cannot-be-illustrated/ ## Key points - Of the 35 objects this archive has researched and does not publish, 27 already carry between one and eleven licensed photographs. They are held because no plate among them has been proved to show that object, not because the rights are unavailable. - European law settled the flat case and deliberately left the three-dimensional one open. Article 14 of Directive 2019/790 strips protection from reproductions of public-domain visual works unless the reproduction is original in the sense that it is the author's own intellectual creation, and a staged photograph of a cabinet can meet that test where a faithful shot of a painting cannot. - The proportion of records held back tracks the object's dimensions. Two of 28 paintings are held, and none of the nine maps, eight photographs or eight textiles, against six of twelve ceramics and six of twelve pieces of furniture. - For an object that exists in multiple copies, the copy is the object. Five of the eight printed books here are held, every one of them a named copy, and each already carries three to seven correctly licensed plates of some other copy. - The scale of an institution's open access programme does not settle identity. The Metropolitan Museum publishes more than 492,000 public-domain images under CC0, and four of the objects this archive cannot illustrate are in that museum. - Two late Roman cage cups in this archive show what the deciding factor usually is. The Lycurgus Cup is published from nine CC0 photographs taken in a British Museum gallery; the Constable-Maxwell cage cup, sold at Bonhams in 2004, is held, and its five plates all show other cups. ## The obstacle is almost never the licence ## What European law settled, and what it left open ## The held rate follows the object's dimensions ## For a multiple, the copy is the object ## Two paintings prove it is not the law ## Two cage cups, and the thing that separated them ## What would actually change the number The public argument about museum images has been an argument about rights for twenty years, and in Europe the rights argument is now largely over for flat works. Measured against the objects it actually stops, that argument was addressing under a quarter of the problem. What keeps an object out of print is the sentence nobody has been able to write with evidence behind it: this photograph shows this thing. That sentence is cataloguing work, it is slow, and it is the only thing that will move the number. ## Questions **Does holding an object back mean nothing is known about it?** No. The research stays on the record and is often complete, and the object keeps its status until a reproduction of it can be shown. Twenty-seven of the 35 held objects already have licensed photographs attached; what is missing is proof that one of those photographs is of that object. **Why not illustrate the entry with a photograph of a comparable object?** Because a heading naming one object above a photograph of another reads as an illustrated entry to anyone not parsing the caption. This publication carries labelled comparison plates inside a record, where the caption states that the picture is not the object; it does not use them as the record's own image. **Is a museum's photograph of a public-domain painting free to reuse in Europe now?** For a faithful flat reproduction of a work whose protection has expired, Article 14 of Directive 2019/790 says the reproduction attracts no copyright or related right, and Germany's Section 68 puts that in one sentence of national law. A photograph of a three-dimensional object is a different question, because the directive preserves protection where the reproduction is the photographer's own intellectual creation, and staging, lighting and angle are the choices that can make it so. ## Sources - [1] Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC. Article 14 (Works of visual art in the public domain), recital 53, and Article 29 (transposition by 7 June 2021). Read from the consolidated EUR-Lex text. - [2] Gesetz ueber Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte (German Copyright Act), Section 68, on reproductions of public-domain visual works. Official consolidated text published by the Federal Ministry of Justice. - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Open Access at The Met', stating that data on the collection and more than 492,000 images of public-domain artworks are available for free and unrestricted use, and that the Open Access Initiative was introduced in February 2017 under Creative Commons Zero. - [4] The Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access API, artworks endpoint. Queried 22 August 2026: 42,260 works with share_license_status CC0, against 68,770 works in the collection with no licence filter applied. - [5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API, object record 470309, The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, accession 54.1.2, The Cloisters. Queried 22 August 2026: isPublicDomain true, one primary image and 209 additional images. - [6] Bonhams, lot record for lot 18, The Constable-Maxwell Cage-Cup, Antiquities, 14 July 2004, 18:00 BST, London, New Bond Street. Sold for GBP 2,646,650 including premium; no separate hammer figure is published on the lot page. - [7] The British Museum, collection record for the Lycurgus Cup, drinking-cup, registration 1958,1202.1, recording its display location in Room 41, Europe AD 300-1100, the Byzantine Empire case.