PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION

The Warburg's Photo Collection consists of about 300,000 photographs of sculptures, paintings, prints, tapestries and other forms of imagery. Most of the works depicted are European, and range in date from classical antiquity to circa 1800. There are also small, expanding sections on various kinds of non-European art.

The collection is organised iconographically: photographs are ordered not by artist or by period, but by subject. So, for example, Raphael's School of Athens is filed under Social Life ø Education ø Schools of Philosophers. Next to it in the folder there are photographs of manuscript illuminations, book plates, woodcuts, drawings, engravings and paintings, some high art, most low art, from all over Europe, produced during a period of about 500 years.

In the Photographic Collection as a whole there are around 18,000 subject folders, providing a detailed overview of European iconography. The photographs are kept in filing cabinets, and inside the drawers of the cabinets are folders of three different sizes. The three orders of folder are placed one inside the other. Large folders correspond to major categories (e.g. Portraits of Italian rulers), while medium-sized folders show subdivisions of said categories (e.g. Gonzaga family). Inside each medium-sized folder there should be a small folder containing the photographs, which can be removed. Large and medium-sized folders, however, should be left in the drawers. Within the folders the photographs are in random order, and there is no division by date or (with rare exceptions) medium.

The photographs are mounted, and information is provided on the back of the mounts. This is kept to a minimum, but wherever possible a reference is provided to a catalogue or article in which fuller information can be found.

The members of staff in the Collection help visitors to find their way around the filing system, and answer enquiries from scholars and the general public. They do not have time to list the contents of large folders for people contacting them from outside London, but they are able to say roughly how many photographs the Institute holds on any particular theme, and whether or not a trip to the Collection would be worthwhile.

Subdivisions

The main subdivisions of the Collection are as follows:

PRE-CLASSICAL ICONOGRAPHY
ANTIQUITIES
RITUAL
GODS AND MYTHS
CLASSICAL LITERATURE
MEDIAEVAL AND LATER LITERATURE
MAGIC AND SCIENCE
GESTURES
SECULAR ICONOGRAPHY
PORTRAITS
HISTORY
SOCIAL LIFE
RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY
ARTISTS
ARCHITECTURE
ORNAMENT
MANUSCRIPTS
ERANOS COLLECTION OF JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES
ASIAN ICONOGRAPHY
NON-EURASIAN ICONOGRAPHY
MENIL ARCHIVE: IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN WESTERN ART

Each section divides up in its own way. Some are arranged alphabetically, while others follow narrative sequences, and others are linked together by neighbouring themes or concepts. A complete list of the subjects in the collection has been compiled,and is now available online. Click each of the above heading to open the corresponding file or go the Subject Index page.

History

The Photo Collection was originally the private photo archive of Aby Warburg. He began to collect photographs systematically in the late 1880s, and at the time of his death in 1929 it already contained around 15,000 photographs.

At first the photographs were ordered by medium and topography (as Umbrian painting or Florentine sculpture), with one or two iconographic subsections where these mirrored the interests of Warburg or those of his deputy, Fritz Saxl. However, after the Institute's move to London in 1933, it was decided to order the entire Collection iconographically, and a system of subject categories was devised by Rudolf Wittkower and Edgar Wind. In the years since then, the number of categories has grown considerably, since new photographs with new subjects have necessitated new folders, and swollen sections have had to be divided into ever finer iconographic subdivisions. Nevertheless, the overall armature laid down by Wind and Wittkower is still in place: it has a flexibility and logic which makes it very easy to work with.

Ordering reproductions

Over the years the Institute has carried out a number of photographic campaigns, and at present around 25,000 negatives, mainly of engravings and etchings listed in Bartsch's Le Peintre Graveur and held in British museums, are stored in the studio. Prints and slides of this material are readily available. A microfilm of the Ruland Collection of material relating to the work of Raphael is also available for sale in the Collection. The Institute's photographer is able to take slides and copy photos from books in the Library (where copyright allows). All orders for photographs are made through the staff in the Collection.

Charges for reproductions

Click here or above for details of charges.
Reproductions can be ordered by email through the following address:
Photographic.Collect@sas.ac.uk

Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture known to the Renaissance

The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture known to the Renaissance is available on a computerised database of some 25,000 images and 40,000 documents, with accompanying videodisks, and can also be consulted from the photographs in the subject files of the Collection. When established in 1947 by Phyllis Pray Bober, the project was intended to document the knowledge of classical works of art up to the time of the Sack of Rome (1527); in recent years, in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and with the support of the Getty Art History Information Program, its scope has been expanded both chronologically (up to 1600) and to include architecture.

The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance has been transferred into an modern web-based database system, and is freely accessible on the internet as from June 2007 at: www.census.de

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THE WARBURG INSTITUTE
University of London - School of Advanced Study
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