The Census project has over the last year begun to work in close cooperation with the project and database Ubi Erat Lupa directed by Ortolf and Friederike Harl (Vienna). Ubi erat Lupa charts the geographic reach of the Roman ’she-wolf’ with a continually-expanding collection of records on the stone monuments of the ancient world. By privileging monuments made in stone and marble, Lupa traces the most enduring physical relics of ancient history, culture, art and society. Like the Census database, it compiles images and bibliography related to antique sculpture, reliefs, inscriptions and works of architecture and includes, as well, details of the post-antique afterlife of these monuments.
Photographs are a particular strength of Ubi erat Lupa. New photographs of the highest quality are continually added to the Lupa collection thanks to comprehensive photographic surveys carried out by Ortolf and Friederike Harl. The database features thousands of photographs of antiquities preserved in museums (who have often opened up their storerooms to the Harls), of antique monuments in the open landscape and of spolia immured on buildings. In cooperation with the Census project, Lupa has recently conducted photographic campaigns in the Museo Civico archeologico in Bologna and the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia. A planned photographic campaign resulting from a cooperation between Census, Lupa and the Musei Reali of Torino will take place in. November, 2023.
The Census and Ubi Erat Lupa are highly compatible databases that will work collaboratively to provide new resources for their own databases and for the academic community at large. Already the overlaps have proven to be fruitful, given the Census’s strengths in postclassical reception and Lupa’s strengths in the history of inscriptions and in antiquities preserved North of the Alps and in Eastern Europe. The collaboration with Ubi erat Lupa has already enriched the Census records on monuments in Graz or in Celje (Slovenia) which were known to the French antiquarian Jean-Jacques Boissard.
Photographic campaigns carried out in cooperation with Ubi erat Lupa:
Bologna, Museo civico archeologico, January 2023
Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia, March 2023
Torino, Musei Reali, November 2023
Ortolf Harl in Brescia
