Bober and Rubin­stein: Index Cards and Photographs

In a letter of September 11, 1946, Saxl informed Kraut­heimer that ‘Mrs. Bober’ would like to work on their survey of anti­ques. In 1947, Phyllis Pray Bober, who had recently received her PhD in archaeo­logy from NYU, joined the project, initi­ally with the role of coll­ec­ting bibliography.

Although Saxl’s prema­ture death in 1948 was a signi­fi­cant setback, the Census project entered a more estab­lished phase in 1953, when NYU became a partner insti­tu­tion toge­ther with the Warburg Insti­tute. From 1953 to 1973, as Rese­arch Asso­ciate and even­tually as foun­ding chair of the Depart­ment of Fine Arts, Bober received insti­tu­tional support from NYU for her work on the Census.

Under Bober’s direc­tion, and in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Photo­gra­phic Coll­ec­tion at the Warburg Insti­tute, its records expanded.

In the early phase of the project, parti­cular emphasis was placed on the study of Renais­sance sketch­books, and their publi­ca­tion in the Studies of the Warburg Insti­tute series. Bober’s own publi­ca­tion of the sketch­books of the Bolo­gnese artist Amico Asper­tini appeared in this series in 1957. Iden­ti­fying Renais­sance drawings after the antique continued to be an important part of Bober’s work on the Census, and NYU would occa­sio­nally subsi­dise summer rese­arch trips to Europe, where she would search drawings coll­ec­tions for new disco­veries. In 1972, Bober left NYU and became a Dean and Professor at Bryn Mawr. At Bryn Mawr she could explore her passion for the history of cook­books and cuisine, culmi­na­ting in the publi­ca­tion of Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastro­nomy in 1999.

A brief time­line of Bober’s career is found below.

The front of the Apollo Belve­dere Census card, Warburg Insti­tute Photo­gra­phic Collection

Illus­tra­tion, rese­arch, orga­niza­tion, and expan­sion were part of Ruth Rubinstein’s work at the Census photo­gra­phic coll­ec­tion. After recei­ving Bober’s typed index cards with descrip­tions of antique monu­ments, Rubin­stein sourced the illus­tra­tive mate­rial. From 1957 until 1996, Rubin­stein held the role of special rese­arch assistant for the Census, sear­ching the photo coll­ec­tion for rele­vant photo­graphs, orde­ring those that were missing and orga­ni­sing them in the collection’s exis­ting index. The Census photos were in this manner inte­grated into the icono­gra­phic clas­si­fi­ca­tion system of the Warburg Institute’s photo coll­ec­tion, but kept in reco­g­nis­ably bright blue folders. Every time she located a photo­graph, Rubin­stein put a check mark on the card. When she disco­vered further repre­sen­ta­tions of the antique monu­ment, she noted them by hand. The backs of the Census cards and photo­graphs in London are filled with Rubinstein’s ’scribbles’: Renais­sance sources disco­vered in books and auction cata­lo­gues, or coll­ected during her daily inter­ac­tions with visi­tors to the Photo­gra­phic Coll­ec­tion. The students in the Census seminar were able to speak to several of Rubinstein’s former colle­agues, who remem­bered how her warm and welco­ming perso­na­lity drew many acade­mics to the Census. The project grew through Rubinstein’s wide circle of cont­acts and friends, and in the social gathe­rings at the home of Ruth and Nicolai Rubin­stein in Hamp­stead. Below are selected excerpts from an unpu­blished type­script in the Warburg Insti­tute Archives of Ruth Rubinstein’s talk, ‘My Thirty-Five Years at the Census in Ten Minutes’. Rubin­stein deli­vered it at a Census Collo­quium at the Warburg Insti­tute held in March 1992.

In 1986, Bober and Rubin­stein published Renais­sance Artists and Antique Sculp­ture: A Hand­book of Sources, a co-authored text with contri­bu­tions by the archaeo­lo­gist Susan Wood­ford. The book combined descrip­tions of the antique reliefs, sarco­phagi and sculp­tures considered the most important for Renais­sance artists with lists of visual sources and updated biblio­graphy. The text conso­li­dated decades of rese­arch and reflects the Census’s long-term focus on Renais­sance figu­ra­tive sketch­books. Pre-dating the disse­mi­na­tion of a compu­te­rised version of the Census on CD-Rom, it made the results of the project widely available for the first time. It quickly became a stan­dard refe­rence work and in 2011 was reis­sued in a revised edition.

The fact that the title of the book prio­ri­tises Renais­sance artists reflects a shift in Bober’s approach to the Census project. As she would write in 1989, ‘from today’s perspec­tive, I must confess that at the begin­ning of work for the Census I was all archaeo­lo­gist’. Even­tually she became ‘a histo­rian of Renais­sance art as much as an archaeo­lo­gist’ (Bober 1989, p. 375). Bober’s fertile imagi­na­tion was incre­asingly stimu­lated by Renais­sance visual art and cultural history, as is seen in the publi­ca­tion in 1977 of what would become a classic article, ‘The Coryciana and the Nymph Corycia’ (Bober 1977). This study in the Journal of the Warburg and Cour­t­auld Insti­tutes explored the theme of the slee­ping Nymph in the artistic, poetic and anti­qua­rian circles of 15th- and 16th-century Rome.