Data­base updates

In colla­bo­ra­tion with the Vien­nese archaeo­lo­gical data­base Ubi erat Lupa, new photo­graphs have been added to the Census data­base of anti­qui­ties in the Palazzo Gius­ti­niani, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo Barbe­rini (Galleria Nazio­nali di Arte Antica), and the Abbazia di Grottaferrata.

Extra­or­di­nary permis­sions were granted to Kath­leen Chris­tian, Ortolf Harl, and Frie­de­rike Harl to photo­graph the anti­qui­ties still visible in the Palazzo Gius­ti­niani, Farnese, and Barbe­rini, as well as the anti­qui­ties in the Census data­base that are present in the museum of the Abbazia di Grot­ta­fer­rata. This campaign was carried out in March, 2025; permis­sions were secured and images were processed over the follo­wing months and the rele­vant photo­graphs have been uploaded into the Census and Lupa.

Many of the anti­qui­ties in these major coll­ec­tions were of great signi­fi­cance for Early Modern artists, yet many of these anti­qui­ties are now inac­ces­sible to the public and photo­graphs of them are scarce or outdated. Using the latest equip­ment, a photo­gra­phic survey was carried out of all of the anti­qui­ties still immured in the walls or present in the cortili and coll­ec­tions of major Roman palaces. New details have been made available of reliefs that are immured high on the walls, shed­ding light on Early Modern resto­ra­tions and display practices.

The results can be found by sear­ching for these loca­tions in the Census, or by sear­ching the data­base of Ubi erat Lupa:

Palazzo Barbe­rini

Palazzo Gius­ti­niani

Palazzo Farnese

Abbazia di Grottaferrata

In colla­bo­ra­tion with Roberta Olson, a sketch­book by the Italian artist Felice Giani in the Yale Univer­sity Art Gallery has been cata­logued in the Census data­base. Olson published an article about this extra­or­di­nary coll­ec­tion of drawings in Master Drawings,* as well as a check­list of the indi­vi­dual sheets on the Master Drawings digital resources platform.

The process of cata­lo­guing the sketch­book in the Census data­base led to several new iden­ti­fi­ca­tions and inte­res­ting disco­veries. A connec­tion could be made, for example, between Giani’s folio 47 r and the now-lost sarco­phagus drawn by Maarten van Heems­kerck in the fore­ground of his famous repre­sen­ta­tion of the “lower” Galli coll­ec­tion, showing Michel­an­ge­lo’s Bacchus surrounded by antiquities.

• Roberta J. M. Olson, “A Redis­co­vered Sketch­book by Felice Giani,” Master Drawings 63: 1 (2025), 75–116, fig. 1–68

Thanks to the gene­ro­sity of the editors and publishers of the new edition of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny’s Taste and the Antique, new images of antique statues are being added to the Census data­base.  In 2024, Adriano Aymo­nino (Univer­sity of Buck­ingham) and Eloisa Dodero (Musei Capi­to­lini) published a new, expanded edition of this classic volume with Harvey Miller/Brepols.  Part of the revi­sion included a major photo­gra­phic campaign carried out by James Stevenson and Ken Jackson of Cultural Heri­tage Digi­ti­sa­tion, UK; the result was a volume of new photo­graphs of the ninety-five cano­nical antique statues included in Haskell and Penny’s text. 

As permis­sions are granted by the museums, these photo­graphs are also being uploaded onto the Census data­base, inclu­ding photo­graphs that were not printed in the new edition. With these new visual resources, major works of antique sculp­ture are visible in close-up, and from multiple viewing angles, allo­wing for new insights into their condi­tion, resto­ra­tion history, and recep­tion history.

Not only are new images are being uploaded, the Census records for the Taste and the Antique statues are also being updated.

Images added thus far in the data­base include:

Cat. 2: Dying Alex­ander, Census ID #156427

Cat. 3: Quirinal Horse­t­amers, Census ID #150776

Cat. 7: Appo­lino, Census ID #10208349

Cat. 11: Arro­tino, Census ID #156131

Cat. 12: Balbus the Elder, Census ID #10078112

Cat. 12.2: Balbus the Younger, Census ID #10078098

Cat. 13: Wild Boar, Census ID #159055

Cat. 15: Farnese Bull, Census ID #156193

Cat. 17: Farnese Captives, Census ID #156676

Cat. 17_2: Farnese Captives, Census ID #156605

Cat. 18: Cara­calla, Census ID #161940

Cat. 19: Castor and Pollux, Census ID #10008664

Cat. 27: Curtius, Census ID #10019336

Cat. 33: Barbe­rini Faun, Census ID #10017691

Cat. 34: Dancing Faun, Census ID #10084072

Cat. 37: Faun with Kid, Census ID #10084158

Cat. 41: Flora Farnese, Census ID #156661

Cat. 46: Farnese Hercules, Census ID #156663

Cat. 47: Hercules and Antaeus, Census ID #156382

Cat. 50: Idol, Census ID #155494

Cat. 53_1: Medici Lion (Vacca). Census ID #160963 and Census ID #10074082

Cat. 59: Marsyas, Census ID #151517

Cat. 61: Mercury, Census ID #159395

Cat. 62: Seated Mercury, Census ID #10037084

Cat. 66: The Niobe Group, Census ID #158365

Cat. 72_1: Pasquino (Rome, Piazza del Pasquino), Census ID #155787

Cat. 72_2: Pasquino (Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi Group), Census ID #156223

Cat. 72_3: Pasquino (Florence, Pitti group), Census ID #153436)

Cat. 73: Pompey, Census ID #160895

Cat. 82: Medici Vase, Census ID #10073628

Cat. 83: Calli­py­gian Venus, Census ID #159516

Cat. 85: Celes­tial Venus, CensusID #12028582

Cat. 86: Crou­ching Venus, Census ID #10009163

Cat. 88: Venus de’ Medici, Census ID # 158343

Cat. 91: Venus Victrix, Census ID #154662

Cat. 94: Uffizi Wrest­lers, Census ID # 156379

New photo­graphs of all folios in Pesaro, Biblio­teca Oliver­iani, MS 59 have been added to the Census database.

This manu­script is one of the anti­qua­rian compi­la­tions made for the Spanish Dome­nican scholar Alphonsus Ciac­co­nius in the 16th century

Some 60 drawings of ancient archi­tec­ture from the Stock­holm Natio­nal­mu­seum have been added to the Census data­base thanks to the contri­bu­tions of Dr Anna Borto­lozzi, who provided records and images from her publi­ca­tion Italian Archi­tec­tural Drawings from the Cron­stedt Coll­ec­tion, Natio­nal­mu­seum, Stock­holm (Hatje Cantz, Natio­nal­mu­seum 2020). The drawings, which depict Roman monu­ments on a large scale, were made in Rome between about 1560 and 1580 by a group of French draughtsmen. The subjects include the Pantheon, temples in the Forum, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Arches of Constan­tine and Septi­mius Severus, the Mauso­leum of Santa Costanza, the Baths of Cara­calla and Diocle­tian, centra­lised mausolea and tombs in the Roman campagna. The Stock­holm drawings bear close compa­rison with similar sets of drawings after anti­quity in other coll­ec­tions (the Gold­schmidt Scrap­book in the Metro­po­litan Museum of Art, the Codex Icon. 209e in the Baye­ri­sche Staats­bi­blio­thek in Munich, and the Codex Destail­leur D in the Berlin Kunst­bi­blio­thek) and were made toge­ther with a set of copy drawings after modern archi­tec­ture. They were probably kept in the work­shops of the Roman archi­tects Fran­cesco da Volterra and Carlo Moderno. 

A book of drawings in Siena form­erly attri­buted to Anton Maria Levi, other­wise known as ‘Il Tozzo’, and now thought to be by Teofilo Gall­ac­cini (Siena, Biblio­teca Comu­nale, S II 4) have been updated with new, colour digital photo­graphs in high reso­lu­tion. Images of all pages of the codex have been added.

The so-called Asper­tini Codex in the Biblio­teca Pala­tina in Parma (Ms. Parm. 1535) have been updated with new, colour digital photo­graphs in high reso­lu­tion. Images of all pages of the codex have been added.

The Census entries for the manu­script of Alfonsus Ciac­co­nius in the Biblio­teca Ange­lica in Rome (Ms. 1564) have been updated with new digital photo­graphs in high reso­lu­tion and in colour.

A new layout now makes it easier to find infor­ma­tion contained in Census records.

Instead of scrol­ling down, now users can click on tabs arranged hori­zon­tally to access infor­ma­tion. Also, the wider use of dynamic links now makes it easier to navi­gate the data­base, as is seen in this example:

New photo­graphs have been added to all of the Census records of Pirro Ligo­rio’s manu­scripts in Naples (Ligorio, Ligorio, BNN, Ms XIII B 1–10). Now, thanks to this campaign, over 1,000 pages of Ligo­rio’s manu­script can be read and studied for the first time in high-reso­lu­tion, colour photo­graphs. The digi­ti­sa­tion of the manu­scripts was carried out with the kind colla­bo­ra­tion of the Biblio­teca Nazio­nale in Naples.

New photo­graphs of the Galli-Albani Slee­ping Nymph now on display in the library of the Dipar­ti­mento di Studi Umani­stici in Urbino (CensusID #157624) were taken for the Census, and have been added to the data­base. Previously this object, which was drawn in the coll­ec­tion of the Galli by Maarten van Heems­kerck and moved to Urbino by Pope Clement XI Albani, was only known through a single black-and-white view published by Maria Elisa Micheli. The photo campaign was conducted with the coope­ra­tion of the Univer­sità degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, Dipar­ti­mento di Studi Umani­stici (DISTUM) and was carried out by the photo­grapher Gian­carlo Gobbi, with the kind assis­tance of Professor Anna Santucci.

Data­base users can now register for user accounts without emai­ling the Census. Simply click on the Register link at the top of the data­base, in the right-hand side of the menu bar, and follow the instructions.

The data in the Census is orga­nised hier­ar­chi­cally: the Pantheon, for example, is a top-level entry that includes many sub-entries under­neath it (the cella of the Pantheon, the portico of the Pantheon, etc.). The Codex Cobur­gensis is a top-level entry that includes all of the pages of the Codex as sub-entries.

In the Census, by default users will auto­ma­ti­cally retreive all possible hits for a search. A search for the Codex Cobur­gensis thus brings up the top-level record for the Codex AND all sub-records, that is, all pages of the Codex.

By selec­ting an appro­priate hier­archy level, you can now choose to search only top-level records (records that are not subor­di­nate to other records). This method is useful, for example, when sear­ching for the Codex Cobur­gensis or the Pantheon itself rather than a parti­cular page of the Codex Cobur­gensis, or a parti­cular column of the Pantheon.

To change this default setting, choose ‘top-level only’ from the drop down menu labelled ‘Hier­archy: auto­matic’. In this manner you can limit your results and can find top-level records more easily.

Census data was exported from the data­base, trans­formed into RDF files, and published on the e‑doc server of the Humboldt Univer­sity. Please see the readme text for further information.