Ubi erat Lupa
Ubi Erat Lupa.
Bilddatenbank zu antiken Steindenkmälern, www.lupa.at
The image database Ubi Erat Lupa maintained by Ortolf and Friederike Harl 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. The Lupa database brings together sculpture, reliefs, inscriptions and works of architecture. Like the Census database it includes, as well, details of the post-antique afterlife of these monuments. Lupa 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.
Photographs of the highest quality are a particular strength of the Lupa database. A strengthening of the collaboration between Lupa and Census has led formed the basis for joint photo campaigns aimed at providing new photographs of antiquities that might not have been photographed in many decades, or are currently inaccessible (for example, kept in storage, or displayed in private palaces or government buildings). This initiative has collaborations in 2023 in Brescia, Bologna, and Turin, and in 2025 in Rome. In February 2025, Census and Lupa were granted the permission to photograph antiquities in the Palazzo Giustiniani (the Senate of Italy), the Palazzo Barberini (Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica), the Abbazia of Grottaferrata, and the Palazzo Farnese.
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. The overlaps found through collaboration 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. For example, a number of antique inscriptions present in the Census database have been identified through cross-checks with the Lupa database. These include, for example, inscriptions in Austria and Slovenia which were known to the antiquarian Jean-Jacques Boissard and are noted in Boissard’s Codex Holmiensis (now in the Stockholm Royal Library). In the mid sixteenth century, Boissard made a drawing of a funerary inscription in Celje, in the church of Saint Maximilian. In the Census database, this inscription was previously recorded as untraced. It was rediscovered in the Lupa database, however, as an object that is still in Celje and is now visible at the Pokrajinski Museum. This match offers insight into Boissard’s working methods, since the representation of the funerary monument itself bears no resemblance to the antique original, in contrast to the relative accuracy of the textual transcription.
Thanks to the Lupa database, in addition to this example, other inscriptions seen by Boissard that were previously catalogued as untraced in the Census database (CensusID 160294, CensusID 160285, CensusID 160281 and CensusID 160298) were identified with works now present in the Pokrajinski Museum, in the Archäologiemuseum in Graz, or in the Burg in Graz (where two inscriptions known to Boissard are now immured in the walls). These examples illuminate how Lupa’s extensive research into stone monuments across Europe will enrich the Census and open up new insights into the antiquarian reception of antiquity in the Early Modern period.

Funerary inscription seen by Jean-Jacques Boissard in the mid 16th century in the church of Saint Maximilian of Celeia and now in the Pokrajinski Museum in Celje. Photograph by Ortolf Harl

Jean-Jacques Boissard, Inscription visible in the church of Saint Maximilian of Celeia, Celje, Slovenia, c. 1559. Stockholm: Codex Holmiensis, fol. 153 v (detail)
Kontakt
Organisation und Fotografie:
Ortolf Harl
1190 Wien, Weinberggasse 60/29/16
ortolf [dot] harl [at] lupa [dot] at
Festnetz: +43 1 320 78 63
Mobil: +43 664 920 0880
Datenbearbeitung und Redaktion:
Friederike Harl
friederike [dot] harl [at] lupa [dot] at
Technische Betreuung:
Jakob Egger
jakob [at] eggerapps [dot] at
