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.