Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luca Cancellari


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. This would probably be best dealt with in a separate discussion for the time being. It can always be brought back here if necessary. Black Kite (talk) 08:01, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Luca Cancellari

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This article details the existence of a 12th-century Byzantine icon painter, who is credited with some of the most important medieval icons of the Virgin Mary in medieval Italy. Its sources are a few Greek encyclopedias, while the author offers as corroborating evidence that a family of the same name existed in the post-Byzantine period (i.e. starting some 4 centuries later). As pointed out in the ongoing discussion in the Greek WP, the problem here is manifold:
 * a) there is a distinct dearth of material for a man who supposedly painted three of the best known Marian icons. Luca Cancellari brings 4 hits, which simply say that a guy of this name painted the Bologna icon; the Greek name brings only the WP page; searches for the transliterated Greek name bring up nothing; a search for the signature brings up 6 hits, of which only one, by the historian of medieval Italian art Bruce Cole, actually analyzes it in any way.
 * b) as can be seen from the search results, the only icon of those described as being his works here to actually be directly attributable to a " Luca Cancellari" is the one in Bologna, which bears the Latin signature "opus Lucae Cancellari". The only serious scholarly study, by Cole, rejects a Byzantine origin as recounted in local legend in favour of a local Tuscan painter, and says that the icon was at Bologna already in 1160, which further contradicts the article's chronology about it being one of the icons looted in 1204.
 * c) a major red flag is that any Byzantine author of the 12th century is practically impossible to have signed in Latin, as the language had died out in Byzantium centuries before; no such cases are attested anywhere in contemporary metropolitan Byzantine art (unlike artists working for Latin rulers or later during the Frankokratia), and indeed personal signatures are very uncommon in Byzantine art until the Palaiologan period
 * d) of the other two works claimed to be attributed to him in the article, the Salus Populi Romani is commonly attributed to the 6th-8th centuries, and the Nicopeia is held to be from the 10th-11th century. Unlike the Bologna Virgin, the Nicopeia was indeed taken from Constantinople in 1204, and the Salus Populi was at its present location already in the 9th century, if not earlier. So there is really nothing to link these icons together, barring a common attribution to St. Luke.
 * e) on the sources themselves, Greek encyclopedias of the past tended to emphasize national achievements more than scientific objectivity (to illustrate the POV, a user pointed out in the Greek WP discussion that Helios 1977 insists that "Greece is the spiritual leader of mankind"), so the likelihood is more than great that this is an invented person (deliberately or not is beside the point), and the info was probably simply repeated by the later works just because he was a great example of Greek artistic genius.
 * f) I have searched high and low in my extensive collection of Byzantine scholarly literature, online prosopographical databases like http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk that contain almost any Byzantine person known to science, etc etc, yet nowhere is there mention of such a person. In short, the article reproduces an apparent WP:OR and WP:SYNTH effort of dubious scientific credentials, and with an utter lack of third-party, non-biased sources to support its assertions. Constantine  ✍  20:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose it is covered by 3 encyclopedic works in the Greek language as below:


 * Eleftheroudakis 1929, vol.7, page.21
 * Helios 1977, vol.11, page.139
 * Hari Patsi 1980, vol.18, page.579


 * Does Wikipedia consider general encyclopedias in other languages acceptable(in the absence of english sources)? To the best of my knowledge it does. Could it be that Constantine is right about the results of the research he made in order to examine the existence of this person? It sure could be. But we cannot decide that all old(how old, before 80s, 90s, 2000s?) Greek encyclopedias are untrustworthy because there is a likelyhood of them being so, and through quoting the intro text of one of these encyclopedias as being overly pompous on issues of Greek history(sure the particular passage is so, but then again any old enough text is likely to contain similar trumpet blowing no matter which country's history it describes, it's a different era and different customs and expressions, and irrelevant to the issue at hand). This argument shouldn't even have been made IMHO, it is a very general and very dangerous argument to make with regards to the validity of an entire category of sources.


 * Could it be that the oldest available source Eleftheroudakis/1929 was the one to make the error and then the later encyclopedias copied this error? It could be, but this is only an assumption not a certainty, and we cannot work with assumptions and intuition on making decisions like this. Here we're making a double assumption one on top of the other, 1st that there isn't a Luca Cangellari and the Eleftheroudakis source was in error, and 2nd, that all the other available works that mention him copied their info from Eleftheroudakis.


 * Constantine found some interesting information that -fortunately or unfortunately- supports the non existence of this person only indirectly and not directly. To me, this is not enough in order to discredit the available sources based on a -good- possibility that they may not be correct on the issue. It's a possibility, not a certainty, and as wikipedia editors I reckon we should rely more on the latter. I therefore maintain that these should be incorporated in the existing article, so that the article maintains a balance between respecting the older greek encyclopedic sources and between the research results and sources obtained by Constantine. Gts-tg (talk) 18:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment it is not the likelihood of error in encyclopaedias in general that concerns me. It is the likelihood of error in sources with a demonstrated bias versus the complete and total silence of any other source on this character, coupled with the contradiction of the article's assumptions on the one icon that was actually painted by someone with this name by the only other third-party, expert, demonstrably neutral source I could find, coupled with the complete mismatch of claimed facts and the basic chronology of the works claimed as his, coupled with the unlikelihood of any Byz. author signing in Latin, etc. I.e. the potential unreliability of the encyclopaedias is only one aspect (d), and, indeed, alone it would have been insufficient grounds for deletion. Coupled with a, b, c, and e, however, the evidence is compelling. Constantine  ✍  18:47, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I do not think that all old greek encyclopedias should be considered as sources with a demonstrated bias, far from it(Helios may have it's problems but the other 2 are highbrow sources). Also, the complete and total silence of any other source on this character may be indicative(i.e. he doesn't exist) or it may equally be unfortunate(i.e. nobody else looked into it apart from the available sources, it can happen). As for the rest of the couplings, they are based on possibilites, likelyhoods and assumptions, i.e. not strong enough bonding material in the counterfact chain. Yes, it makes one suspicious and eyebrow raising to read all of the above info you submitted, but proof it is not. That's why I am saying, fine, let's respect the sources but at the same time not give a carte blanche at the historicity of this person and lets embed this info into the actual article so that the readers can judge for themselves. Gts-tg (talk) 18:56, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this "possibilites, likelyhoods and assumptions" doesn't cut it. The chronology of the icons is relatively well attested, and directly contradicts these encyclopedia articles. Ditto the one and only expert scholarly opinion on who this Cancellari fellow was. And barring any direct evidence to the contrary (because that would require additional evidence that would have shown up somewhere), the encyclopedia articles in question also are based on "possibilites, likelyhoods and assumptions", i.e. the assumption that the Luca Cancellari of the Bologna icon was a Byzantine painter, the assumption that it was looted from Constantinople in 1204 (which is demonstrably false), and the even greater assumption that the other two icons were also painted by him because they are attributed to St. Luke, so possibly they were indeed painted by some guy named Luke, who likely was the same as Cancellari. Unless the original author received revelation from the Holy Spirit, that is the obvious logical process he followed, and I can't begin to fathom how this tortuous coatracking of suppositions can be considered reliable. Constantine  ✍  19:21, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment The discussion on this AFD has an air of a debate around original research. It isn't a goal of WP to decide who this person is or is not. It is instead encyclopedic to report what others have concluded. Contradictions between sources are fine, and they all can be included in the WP article. A section on "other theories about this artist" would be just fine, but it has to include third-party sources of information. LaMona (talk) 20:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but here we have a special WP:FRINGE case, where every single piece of the puzzle forming the article is either dubious or outright false. In light of that, WP:EXCEPTIONAL applies, and tertiary sources like encyclopedias (whose accuracy is furthermore suspect due to POV) are not enough. Constantine  ✍  22:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Then you need to find sources that discuss this, and add their view to the article. Surely you have gotten your information from somewhere. LaMona (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That's the whole point: this is not a case of competing sources or a dispute on the details of the subject. As I outline above, there is no subject, as no primary or secondary source that mentions such a man other than being some obscure guy who painted one icon, known only from his signature. The encyclopaedias used to reference it themselves provide zero references as to where they got their information; the apparent conclusion one is forced to draw is that they extrapolate based on assumptions, but every single item of the context they have built around this guy is flat wrong. Constantine  ✍  22:23, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Greece-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:07, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:07, 4 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep, but perhaps Stubify -- Greek encyclopaedias should as much reliable sources as English language works. What we have here is a scholarly argument as to the correctness of the encyclpaedia entries.  I have to say that I am sceptical.  A Greek-based artist would be unlikely to sign in Latin.  His name is Latin - Luke the Chancellor.  In England, the chacellor is an officer within a Cathedral chapter, who acts as judge of the diocesan consistory court.  I presume it is the same in Italy.  If so, the obvious implication is that Luke was Chancellor of Bologna.  Icons (such the signed one) are a Greek phenomenon, rather than a Latin one.  Is it possible that Luke was a Greek exile in Italy, who rose in the church hierarchy there?  In a land devoid of icons, he painted one for his own devotional use? That is my theoiry and thus OR.  Nevertheless, we do have a picture with his signature on it.  Whatever the scholastic theories have been built around that fact, attributing other works to him, that fact cannot be denied.  It may be that the encyclopedias are guilty on invention, and that the attribution of other works is incorrect.  If so, the nom may like to edit the article to add some skepticism to the claims.  Not being a Byzantine or an art historian, I am not qualified to do more than guess.  Peterkingiron (talk) 15:01, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.