Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance
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The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance (abbreviated Census) is an interdisciplinary research project dedicated to the study of the reception of antiquity in the Renaissance. At the heart of the project is its scholarly database recording antique works of art and architecture known in the Renaissance in relation with the early modern sources documenting them. The project is based at the Institute of Art and Visual History at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
The Census project came about as a means to acquire more clarity about the actual knowledge of antiquity during the Renaissance era. Since its inception, the project has pursued the goal of registering all antique monuments known in the Renaissance and the Renaissance documents relating to them. After focusing on figurative art and its reception up until 1527 in the early phase, the temporal limit was later moved to around 1600 and other classes of art, mainly architecture, were included.[1] In 2015, the Census database contained approximately 15,000 records of antique monuments as well as approximately 36,000 visual and written sources from the Renaissance and is continuously extended today.[2] The ancient monuments cover sculpture, architecture, epigraphs, coins, paintings and mosaics. The Renaissance documents include drawings, prints, sculptures, paintings and medals as well as collection inventories, travelogues, artists' biographies and archival documents.[1]
In addition to the records concerning the core topic of the Census database, collaborating projects have also added records that relate to earlier and later historical periods. Between c. 2009–2015, records related to medieval works of art were entered into the database in cooperation with the project "Corpus Medii Aevi." Between c. 2009–2016, records related to the reception of antiquity by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other antiquarians of his time were added by the project "Corpus Winckelmann."
When the new database with the new interface was released, the terminology regarding the Early Modern objects was changed from "documents" to "postclassical works". This change roots in the recent shift in methodology, reflecting new research approaches, which emphasise Renaissance artistic invention over reception. That leads to a closer examination of the works themselves and underline their own artistic standing as works of art.
History
The Census was founded in 1946 at the Warburg Institute in London as a cooperation project with the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. The project was initiated by the art historians Fritz Saxl and Richard Krautheimer and the archaeologist Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann who sought after a reliable research tool for a better understanding of the afterlife of antiquity in the Renaissance. From 1947 the archaeologist Phyllis Pray Bober helped with the realization of this idea by developing an index card system. In addition to information on dating, authorship, iconography, etc., the ancient monuments were recorded together with the corresponding Renaissance documents and sorted alphabetically and by genre. Initially, the compilation was restricted to antique sculpture and its early-modern documentation.[1][3] Since 1954 the handwritten card entries were supplemented by reproductions from the Warburg Institute's Photographic Collection.[3]
In 1957, Ruth Rubinstein joined the Census at the Warburg Institute and became the second long-standing protagonist besides Bober, who had always worked for the project in New York. Since then, two corresponding index card systems and photographic collections were filed in New York and London. Over time, a number of critical editions of Renaissance sketchbooks after the antique based on research done with the Census were produced.[3] One of the most important publications that arose within the Census project was Bober's and Rubinstein's Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources, first published in 1986.[4]
In the late 1970s, the idea was born to convert the analogue index card system into a computer application. Since 1981, the first Census database was designed and created within the newly launched Art History Information Program of the J. Paul Getty Trust.[1][3] Together, German art historian and archaeologist Arnold Nesselrath, newly appointed director of the Census project, and American programmer Rick Holt developed an object-relational data model and a database software for UNIX systems, which allowed to access data not only from the monuments file but from the documents file as well, as from authority files for places, persons, etc. At the same time, the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome) became a host institution of the Census and the project's scope was extended to the reception of ancient architecture in the Renaissance.[3][5]
After a productive decade of data entry both in London and in Rome, a newly developed retrieval system for the Census database was publicly introduced at the Warburg Institute in 1992.[6] In 1995, after Horst Bredekamp had successfully campaigned for the project's integration into the art history department of the Humboldt University, the Census moved to Berlin.[6] Additional funding for the project was obtained from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.[6] In the following years, the database was converted to the MS-DOS-based database system Dyabola. This allowed for data entry using several personal computers within a local area network, and, in 1998, for the first time publication of the database as a PC application distributed on CD-ROM (later on DVD), supplemented by annual updates. The first rudimentary internet version of the Census database was available to subscribers from 2000 onwards.[5]
After the financial support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research had ended, additional funding was obtained through the Academies Programme of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities in 2003 and the Census became a long-term project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which cooperated with the Humboldt University's project until the end of 2017. During this time, the database software was completely renewed once again, this time into a browser-based web application. Using a highly individualised version of the digital asset management system Easydb, the Census has been accessible online with open access since 2007.[5]
In June 2020, U.S. art historian Kathleen Christian took over as director of the Census.[7] In 2023 the Census upgraded its database software to the FYLR system that is a successor of Easydb, resulting in a new interface. Following upon a pilot project carried out at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and funded by the Senatskanzlei Berlin in 2018-2020, the focus turned to making the Census data into Linked Open Data.[8] A two-year project carried out between 2021 and 2023 in collaboration with Takin.solutions allows data from the relational database to be transformed into RDF / XML using the X3ML mapping language. With the goal of providing Census data as FAIR data, Census data was semantically encoded using the CIDOC CRM ontology. As a result of this project, a SPARQL endpoint was made available and exports of the RDF / XML files are deposited regularly on the Humboldt University's e-doc server.
In 2022 the Census, in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana, began to offer the Census x Hertziana Fellowship, awarded annually to a pre-doctoral or post-doctoral scholar studying topics related to the reception of antiquity. In 2023, the Fellowship was expanded to include the Warburg Institute in London and is now offered as the Census Fellowship in the Reception of Antiquity by the Humboldt-Universität, the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Warburg Institute.
Publications
From 1999 to 2020, the Census published the multilingual periodical Pegasus – Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike. The journal offered a forum for all disciplines concerned with the reception of antiquity and was concerned with all post-antique periods. In addition, it presented research results emerging directly from the work with the Census database.
Furthermore, the book series Cyriacus – Studien zur Rezeption der Antike was formerly edited by Arnold Nesselrath while Director of the Census, together with the Winckelmann Society (Stendal) and the Winckelmann Institute of Classical Archeology at Humboldt University of Berlin. It served as a publication platform for conference proceedings and monographs.
The current book series of the Census All'Antica: Early Modern Perspectives on the Antique is an English-language series published by Brepols/Harvey Miller and co-edited by Cammy Brothers and Kathleen Christian. All'Antica aims to publish monographs, conference proceedings and translations of work related to the reception of antiquity both within and beyond Europe.
In addition, the Census publishes the research blog Verso on the Hypotheses platform. Verso is devoted to short articles on the history of the Census, research stemming from the project, or methodological issues.
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References
1 2 3 4 Nesselrath, Arnold (1984). "The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance". In Corti, Laura (ed.). Automatic Processing of Art History Data and Documents. Papers Vol. 2. Regione Toscana. pp.83–96.
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