Preparing the Ground for the Ecch with Heritage Digital Twins - Multi-Disciplinary Data Integration and Visualization for Research and Conservation: The Case-Study of a Nativity Icon from Deryneia, Cyprus

Abstract

The article presents both the conceptual and the implementation aspects of an integrated approach to the investigation of painted works of art, framed by the semantic-aware heritage digital twin concept and its related knowledge graph and interrogable through a 3D scientific visualization of the artwork. The use-case is a 16th century icon from Cyprus, studied by means of 3D documentation and related scientific visualization, analytical investigations based on spectroscopy, technical imaging and dendroarchaeology methods and described from an art historical perspective. Data deriving from each domain was aligned in a common knowledge graph and semantically described within the recently-defined ontological framework of the Heritage Digital Twin (HDT). The visualization and query of data were conducted within an Open-Source software (OSS) environment including QGIS for data query and visualization. Spectroscopy imaging maps were created using a Python-based extension of the OSS PyMca while the 3D model and its associated texture maps was created using MeshLab and visualized with Potree.

Keywords: heritage digital twins, data integration, scientific visualization, post-Byzantine icons, hyper-spectral imaging, FAIR data principles