Introduction

The aim of this project, planned for three years and situated in the field of the history of sciences, is a comparative analysis of the image of ancient culture and history from BC 49 to AD 96 drafted by scientists and antiquaries in the Renaissance on the basis of ancient coins. The Institute of Art History in Florence, Italy, (KHI) will digitalize main parts of numismatic literature in its library, from Andrea Fulvio to Francesco Angeloni, in order to create a "Digital Corpus of Numismatic Books in Early Modern Times" on its website, which can be consulted free of charge. The Numismatic Collection in Berlin, the largest coin collection in Germany, will provide the opportunity to study the original coins and thus to verify the literary tradition. The Numismatic Collection will describe and take photos of all its coins from Caesar to Domitian and will present them online in the interactive catalogue.

The literature of the 16th and the early 17th century on ancient coins, digitalized by the KHI, will be analysed within the Census Project. The main focus will be on the emissions from Gaius Iulius Caesar to the end of the Flavian dynasty. The reproductions and descriptions of the coins by the antiquaries will be integrated in the database of the Census and the data-files will be linked with the full-texts. The reproductions of the Renaissance will be confronted with the verified original ancient coin types, which mainly are to be found in the Numismatic Collection in Berlin. On this basis the methods of numismatic research in early modern times will be analysed.

This project focuses on the history of the Roman Empire as well as on the 16th century and examines the approach to classical antiquity in the Renaissance. The new digital corpus of the numismatic literature of early modern times, the extension of the database of the Berlin Coin Collection and the establishment of the Census of ancient coins known in the Renaissance will offer rich research material for the international scientific community and will initiate further studies in the fields of art history, numismatics and archaeology.