Tag Archive for Art History Databases

New Database: Payments to Artists – 17th-Century Rome

A new database has been launched based on the research of Richard Spear for his recent book Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters (see this earlier post for details on the book). The database is described on the Getty website as follows: Artists’ wealth, like that of most Renaissance and Baroque painters, was principally derived from what they earned selling their art. Data that documents payments to artists—as opposed to resale prices or inventory evaluations—is the primary means for analyzing the socioeconomic lives of painters in…

BHA to continue with free access for all

The Getty has announced on their site that the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will continue to operate. They state that: Since ending its collaboration with the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)–CNRS in December 2007, the Getty has been searching for partners to continue the production and distribution of BHA. This process has been complicated, and with no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site. It…

Tables of Contents of open access art history journals

There is a blog that tracks the Tables of Contents of online, open access art history journals. The author of the site state that: The aim of this blog is to collect the TOCs of new issues of open access journals in the field of art history. “Art history” is conceived here in a rather narrow sense. Although the header contains tabs like “Contemporary Art & Theory” or “Architecture” too, a comprehensive outlook on these fields is not intended. Periodicals of related disciplines are evaluated only if they have some…

Bibliography of the History of Art to cease at the end of March

It appears that the Bibliography of the History of Art is to fold at the end of this month due to cost cutting at the Getty. The Cornell University Library reports that: For a number of years, the Getty Research Institute has maintained the database, Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). Cornell has been able to license access to that database via OCLC’s First Search platform. Due to the economic crisis, the Getty took the radical step last summer of declining to continue the BHA. On Friday, March 5,…

JSTOR Auction catalogues online – open access till June 2010

JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Auction catalogs are vital for provenance research as well as for the study of art markets and the history of collecting. This prototype site is open to the public through June 2010. If you are interested in this content and the importance to art research, you…

Painting for Profit in 17th century Italy – Upcoming Book and online Database

painting for profit

Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters by Richard Spear and Philip Sohm with contributions by  Renata Ago, Elena Fumagalli, Richard Goldthwaite, Christopher Marshall and Raffaella Morselli. In this highly original book five leading art historians team up with two distinguished economic and social historians to investigate the financial worlds of painters in Baroque Italy. Exploring the many variables that determined the prices asked or received by painters—including the status of their patrons, the size of works and time spent making them, their subject matter, and their…

History of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome – Archival Documents now online

History of the Accademia di San Luca

A new online archive of interest to scholars of Italian art history. History of the Accademia di San Luca The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma brings together a body of largely unpublished notarial records from the Trenta Notai Capitolini (TNC) found in the Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), many previously thought lost, concerning the institutional history of the Accademia. This new material sheds light on the foundation, operation, administration, and financial management of the academy from its…