Collections & Initiatives

The online exhibition accompanies and complements the research exhibition at Palazzo Zuccari (September 18–December 6, 2024). It is dedicated to the oldest collection of negatives in the Bibliotheca Hertziana's photographic collection, which have recently been attributed to the Saxon military captain Paul Lindner, an unknown self-taught photographer active in Rome around 1900. The photographs reveal Lindner's excellent understanding of architectural and urban contexts and his affinity with the pictorialist tendencies of photography at the time, as well as demonstrating his fascination with the villages of central Italy and the Roman Campagna.
 

The present Special Collection features more than 3300 photographs of Mexican cultural heritage reaching from the pre-modern period to the present. More than 1600 works of art and architecture are described with normalized and linked metadata.

This Special Collection features almost 900 photographs documenting more than 400 works of art and architecture in Bolivia, from the pre-contact era to the present day. The photographs were taken by Tristan Weddigen in 2016 during a field study trip to La Paz, Sucre, and Potosí, co-organized with Jens Baumgarten (UNIFESP) and supported by The Getty Foundation. Nicole Falconi Müller ingested the metadata, which is organized, defined, and linked according to the latest standards. We utilized the CIDOC-CRM ontology provided by the Swiss Art Research Infrastructure (SARI), within the EasyDB digital asset management system. This approach ensures that the open-linked data is locatable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). While the photographic collection does not provide a comprehensive view of Bolivian cultural heritage, it aims to support research and welcomes external contributions.

The archive of art and archival materials related to the sculptural practice of Italian artist Mauro Staccioli (1937–2018), here called Staccioli Digital Archive, is the product of the  interaction of the several departments of the Bibliotheca Hertziana and is thus primarily a successful exercise in the extremely complex process of integrating existing resources, which normally provide services at institutional level, for a specific project crossing all departments focused on the Archive.
The web application includes several dynamically generated ways to access the material in an exploratory and surprise-generative manner. At each level a new and different digital resource for the relevant entity (project, person, place, artwork, archival unit) is presented to the user. A timeline, a map and the organization of the materials by keyword allow for exploration, while the document-types offer a way to get directly to specific materials. Specific item views are offered by the built-in IIIF Mirador app. A searchable graph gives navigable access to related entities.
The Digital Archive formed the basis for the exhibition „Mauro Staccioli: Cementing an Artistic Legacy | Mauro Staccioli: Consolidare un’eredità artistica“, showcasing a collection of over thirty objects held from 18 October 2023 to 19 January 2024.
 

The special collection features 400 photographs that capture art and architecture in Argentina, spanning from the early modern period to the present day. The metadata for these 230 objects have been structured, defined, and linked in accordance with the latest standards. This collection is designed to facilitate research into Argentina’s rich cultural heritage.

The online exhibition accompanies and complements the research exhibition at Palazzo Zuccari (July 10–October 6, 2023). It focuses on one of Giulio Romano’s preparatory drawings for the famous fresco cycle created for the great hall of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum Hill, today preserved in Palazzo Zuccari. The recent restoration of the drawing representing The Liberation of Cloelia has provided an opportunity to highlight the special appreciation for Italian Renaissance art, and especially for Giulio Romano, of Henriette Hertz, cosmopolitan collector and founder of the Bibliotheca Hertziana.
 

The BHMPI holds the estates of renowned personalities in the history of the discipline, such as Joseph Croquison (1890–1977) and Franz Graf Wolff Metternich (1893–1978), as well as the scientific bequests of Friedrich Noack (1858–1930). The material is administered and supervised by Stephanie Seidl. It can be consulted with the permission of the library director Golo Maurer.

The special collection gives access to 1,300 photographs showing Peruvian art and architecture from pre-colonial times to the present. The metadata for 600 objects has been structured, defined, and linked according to state-of-the-art standards. The collection aims to support the study of Peru’s rich and diverse cultural heritage.

The online exhibition accompanies and complements the on-site exhibition by Ukrainian artist Elena Subach at Palazzo Zuccari (April 19 to June 9, 2023). The featured series was created in spring 2022 when museum workers and volunteers all over the country rushed to protect cultural heritage in the wake of the escalation of the Russian military aggression.
 

In 10 chapters, the exhibition "Describing Ukraine: Cartography and Travelogues" examines the genesis and transformation of the Western view of the Through 10 chapters, the exhibition "Describing Ukraine: Cartography and Travelogues" examines the genesis and transformation of the Western view of the present territory of Ukraine, which has always been an important travel destination for Western European missionaries, explorers and diplomats. The maps and travelogues produced throughout these journeys provide information about the manifold political, economic, and not least art-historical interconnections that have shaped the history of both regions for more than two thousand years. More

The online exhibition accompanies and complements the on-site exhibition at Palazzo Zuccari (November 17, 2022 to February 10, 2023). They are part of an extensive project of digitization and cataloging of the personal archive of the photographer Massimo Piersanti and the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte Archive of the MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Art, facilitating access to these images for researchers and professionals, as well as encouraging their further study and analysis.
 

An Online Exhibition by the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History in cooperation with the Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinde Rome
The Evangelical-Lutheran church in Rome was consecrated on the 5th of November 1922. The Photographic Collection takes the centenary as an opportunity to trace the path from planning to completion in an online exhibition, using the material from several photographic campaigns that have been conducted at the church over the past decades, the last comprehensive one in 2019.

In the context of the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Venice and Padua, the Photographic Collection presents an online exhibition by photographer Domenico Ventura on the Land Walls of Constantinople. Originally, the exhibition was due to be shown on site at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in March 2020 and accompanied by a workshop with Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, Silvia Pedone, Silvia Ronchey and Aleksandar Shopov. Invitations had already been printed, but the Covid-19 outbreak prevented both events from taking place.

The online exhibition presents samples from a collection of almost 3.500 photographs documenting art and architecture in Brazil from the early modern times till today to support research on its rich and diverse cultural heritage. The metadata for more than 900 objects have been structured, defined, and linked following the state of the art.
 

This special collection gives access to almost 2,900 photographs documenting Filipino art and architecture from the early modern to contemporary times. The information about the approximately 800 entities is structured, defined, and certified according to the most recent technical standards. The initiative aims to support new research on the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the Philippines.

The rich historical holdings of old prints, art objects, furniture and archival materials date back to the beginning of Henriette Hertz's collecting activities 140 years ago. Until now, they were known to the public only in isolated cases. The Bibliotheca Hertziana has systematically catalogued this cultural heritage and will gradually publish it online under the heading Special Collections. The Special Collections are spread over almost all departments of the institute. The library primarily holds the collection of rare books (20,000 volumes) as well as numerous archival materials from the history of the institute and the history of art history, as well as artists' archives. The exhibition Paper Eruptions is the first online exhibition from the Special Collections of the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s Library.
 

Negli anni Settanta, l’artista Pablo Echaurren fu uno dei protagonisti della controcultura visiva. Come collezionista è riuscito a creare il più importante archivio di documenti della creatività politico-artistica post-68. I fondi raccolgono fanzine, volantini, disegni, manoscritti, fotografie e soprattutto riviste quali A/Traverso, Viola e Oask?!, oggi quasi irreperibili, come anche il lavoro dell’artista degli anni Settanta, in particolare i suoi acquarelli, smalti, quaderni di appunti, disegni e fotografie. Grazie a questo archivio si può comprendere un decennio chiave della storia dell’Italia contemporanea. Grazie alla collaborazione tra la Bibliotheca Hertziana e la Fondazione Echaurren Salaris nell'ambito dell'iniziativa di ricerca Rome Contemporary la collezione digitale è consultabile.

At the Department Cities and Spaces in Premodernity, digitized city maps of Naples are annotated (using their respective legends) to make them easier to use and read. The representations of Naples created by Theti 1560, Du Pérac and Lafréry in 1566, Stinemolen in 1582, Baratta in 1627, and the Duca di Noja in 1775 each produce their own image of Naples, providing information about the structure of the city but also shedding light on the respective historical readings. It is work in progress, but already offers an excellent tool for any kind of study of the history of the urban space of Naples.

Since its foundation, the port city of Palermo has been defined by a nomadic gaze. Thanks to its focal position in the Mediterranean, the city has experienced manifold and mixed flows of populations, from the early Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arab, Norman, Spanish and Peninsular to the more recent African, Middle Eastern and transoceanic ones propelled by global imbalances. In 2018 a major photographic campaign was commissioned by the institute’s Photographic Collection to contribute to the visual documentation of the city. Over 600 professional photographs were produced encompassing art and architecture from the Middle Ages up to the contemporary.

The earthquake of 2016 and the subsequent seismic sequence have dramatically changed the face of Amatrice: lives were lost, the urban fabric was disrupted, and endangered monuments were destroyed. Today, Amatrice looks deserted: two towers stand isolated, the last trace of the medieval structure, the symbol of a vanished city now reduced to piles of rubble. With its historical center ravaged by the earthquake and—by now—erased nearly completely by the removal of rubble, Amatrice’s memory is entrusted to photography. But that’s not all: the images also serve as a starting point for future measures of preservation and reconstruction; they are an instrument for documentation and knowledge.