Talk:Equestrian statue of Charles II trampling Cromwell

Why italics and title case?

Ham II - what is the evidence for "Charles II Trampling Cromwell" being the title for this sculpture, rather than just being a description? It is in fact an equestrian statue of Charles II trampling Cromwell - or at least it has been interpreted as such - but has anyone outside Wikipedia used "Charles II Trampling Cromwell" as a title? As far as I recall, none of the sources use that title. Has it been invented for this article? Theramin (talk) 00:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@Theramin: As a descriptive name in sentence case, rather than as the title of an artwork, "Charles II trampling Cromwell" (the article's original title) would be incomplete, and so would fail WP:PRECISE. A fuller article title which would meet that criterion would be Equestrian statue of Charles II trampling Cromwell, but that would not be very WP:CONCISE. Equestrian statue of Charles II, Newby Hall would meet both those criteria plus WP:CONSISTENT and MOS:ART/TITLE, but would lose the piquant detail of Cromwell being trampled on. (If it weren't for that, I think that could be the best title for this article.) I assume that when you created the article you decided that a concise article title was best, and in order to make that work better with our naming conventions I've treated it as a title for the sculpture with the accompanying italics and title case.

It's not unheard of for us to bestow italicised titles, rather than descriptive names, on artworks where there is "no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic" (to quote WP:COMMONNAME). Buddha Preaching his First Sermon (Sarnath) is an example that comes to mind, and to a lesser extent Diptych of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza. Ham II (talk) 06:48, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Ham II. I don't feel particularly strongly about the previous title over the ones you've suggested above. But I fear you are crediting me with more thought about the matter than I gave it 2.5 years ago: I think I was just reusing the language in several articles which mentioned a "statue of Charles II trampling Oliver Cromwell", or similar. As far as I recall, it was meant to be descriptive, not a formal title, as I'm not aware of a proper title being used in any of the sources.

Even if our policies allow us to invent titles, I'd rather not create one from the whole cloth if we can avoid it. Perhaps Equestrian statue of Charles II trampling Cromwell (no italics) might be better? Theramin (talk) 01:42, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

@Theramin: I'm happy to go with that, so I've made the move and turned the other options into redirects. Thanks for your understanding! Ham II (talk) 06:35, 7 May 2023 (UTC)