From 1852 the Hôtel Drouot was the space where the French auctioneers (Commissaires-Priseurs) – who held a stately sanctioned monopoly – organized their auctions. By processing data from the art auction catalogue repertory by Frits Lugt and the extended version Art Sales Catalogues Online, it is possible to map the networks of art marketing at…[Read more]

The following text presents an online project, which has been developed since April 2007 with a duration of five years on the initiative of the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut in Frankfurt and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, together with the partner institutions Städel Museum and Historisches Museum in Frankfurt and jointly financed by…[Read more]

The city of Lucca was never limited to the urban area within the walls. Autumn and winter would be lived in the city palazzo, with life concentrating upon commercial activities enlivened by entertainments such as music and theatre. In spring and summer life was relocated en masse to the villa. This article outlines the essentials of Lucchese…[Read more]

The garden theatre can take many forms: it can erupt forth in an explosion of water and sound as in the teatro d’acqua; it can appear carved into a hedge as a teatro di verzura; or it can calmly wait to be filled with performers as in a teatro avanti il palazzo. The garden theatre was first a feature of the Baroque garden in Italy, before f…[Read more]

This article invites us to consider the usefulness of iconography as a method to describe the subjects represented in medieval works of art. In this study, a greater emphasis has been put on investigating the epistemological implications resulting from the use of that method, and the biases that may appear in the process of transforming images…[Read more]

Computational analysis of the potential historical professional networks inferred from surviving print impressions offers novel insight into the evolution of early modern artistic printmaking in Europe. This analysis traces a longue durée print production history that examines the changing ways in which different regional printmaking communities…[Read more]

Companion materials for “Introductory Digital Humanities Curriculum for the High School English Classroom,” also available on Humanities Commons.

This study examines the connection between architecture and economy in Mycenaean Greece; it is a deep investigation of economic theory and models of the Mycenaean economy, existing methods for the study of prehistoric architecture, and particular Mycenaean structures. Over the course of the study, I present current thinking on the Mycenaean…[Read more]

This study examines the connection between architecture and economy in Mycenaean Greece; it is a deep investigation of economic theory and models of the Mycenaean economy, existing methods for the study of prehistoric architecture, and particular Mycenaean structures. Over the course of the study, I present current thinking on the Mycenaean…[Read more]

Case study from the Getty’s digital art history team shows how modeling and machine learning are shedding light on the history of the art market.

Live video streaming as a technique became political with the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. To see images in real time and without the mediation by journalists affected many people not because they shared the same space with the various protesters but the same time. In the last years, artists have started to adopt streaming as a technical…[Read more]

The open access movement has taken a strong hold within cultural heritage institutions, as large-scale digitization efforts are becoming increasingly popular in most libraries, museums, and archives. These initiatives have had a particular effect on the status of rare and unique materials through the provision of high-quality images and…[Read more]

Why do we play games—with and upon each other as well as ourselves? When are winners also losers, and vice-versa? How and to what end do we stretch the spaces of play? What happens when players go ‘out of bounds,’ or when games go ‘too far’? Moreover, what happens when we push the parameters of inquiry: when we play with traditional narrative…[Read more]

Through an engagement with theory from the fields of art history, anthropology, and sociology, this article examines the archival existence of medieval manuscripts and facilitates an understanding of archival practice and its effects on user experience from the perspective of the researcher, rather than from that of the archivist or information…[Read more]

Through a discussion of the materiality of photographic documents and the inherent qualities of digital objects, this article examines the viability of digitization as a method of archival photographic preservation. By exploring notions of surrogacy, originality, and aura, the author presents and deconstructs the popular argument that digital…[Read more]

Review of Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence by Carl Brandon Strehlke

A brief essay about the work Past Won’t Pass (Catalog #52) by artist Noritaka Minami.

Emphasizing the peculiar, the perverse, the clandestine and the scandalous, this volume opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. Contributors consider not just painted (conventional) representations of sexual activities and eroticized bodies, but also images from print media, drawings, sculpted objects…[Read more]