Simple search in the BIOP

First enter the artist's name as you know it, without a title of address. If nothing comes up, try the surname alone, then spelling variants. Then add a descriptive word — "portrait", "bronze", "mask" — to refine.

The engine recognises accents, plurals and certain transliterations (for example Tchaikovsky, Chaikovsky). It can search in any of the site's three languages: a term entered in French also finds records written in English or Spanish.

Each result shows a thumbnail, the title, the supposed author, the date of disappearance and the country. An indicator specifies the state of the record: active alert, work found, provisional record. Results are sorted by relevance, then by date of report.

By clicking on a result, you reach the identification record: photographs, dimensions, distinguishing marks and contact details of the person to contact. These elements allow comparison with the work being examined.

Simple search relies on what the report described. A work reported under another name, or without a precise description, may escape a keyword query. That is why image search and advanced search are complementary.

Nor does it replace examination of provenance: a work absent from the database may have been stolen without the theft being declared. It is a basic check, useful but never sufficient on its own.

Regular users can save their favourite queries and receive an alert when a new record matches. This function is available free of charge after creating an account.

People with visual impairments have an adapted version of the interface, compatible with screen readers, and a text description of the photographs for the most consulted records.