Wikipedia:Naming conventions (works of art)

Note: this is a new proposal for a naming convention; being drafted; not yet considered by RFC; based on discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#Article names of statues of people.

Use common name when feasible

Articles on works of art should be titled by the work’s common names, like other topics. Works of art that have official names usually use that name as the article title, (italicized, e.g. The Artist as Hephaestus) unless some other name is more common.

Use descriptive title when common name not feasible

Many works of art do not have a common name, and are referred to by description, so Wikipedia uses descriptive titles in such cases.

Paintings and sculptures are often referred to as "painting of X", "statue of X", "sculpture of X", "bust of X", etc., In such cases it is inappropriate for Wikipedia to title the article as "X (sculpture)", "X (painting)", and such, which incorrectly imply that the name of the artwork is "X".

For example, many statues have their subject's name "carved in stone" on them, but that name is used only to refer to the subject and seldom or never to refer to the statue itself, so the subject's name is not used as article title for the statue in such cases (e.g. Statue of Louis Agassiz, not Louis Agassiz (sculpture)).

Disambiguation

Disambiguation either by artist or by location are both acceptable. Which is most appropriate usually depends on what the other uses are. In rare cases where that is insufficient to identify a specific work of art, both are used. Choose based on recognizability and/or preciseness, without disambiguating unnecessarily per WP:MOSDAB guidelines.