Attributed to Carlo Dolci
The Blue Madonna
oil on canvas
17th century
Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible -- Paul Klee
Art Media
As a visual medium, art historical research has benefited from online sources of high quality digital image databases. Some of the most popular include:
- Artstor This link opens in a new windowWith more than 2 million images* (and growing), scholars can easily examine wide-ranging material such as Native American art from the Smithsonian, treasures from the Louvre, and modern architectural plans from Columbia University.
Composed of approximately 300 curated sub-collections, Artstor supports and enriches study across disciplines, including world events from Magnum Photos, anthropology from Harvard’s Peabody Museum, and archaeology from Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Art Archives and, making it a resource for your whole institution. - Berg Fashion Library This link opens in a new windowThe Berg Fashion Library provides access to the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, e-books, e-journals, a museum directory, reference works, images, foundational works on fashion across the globe, since 1600.The database isupdated 3 times a year.A specially-created taxonomy allows users to refine by place, period, themes, textiles and more.
- CARLI Digital Collections This link opens in a new windowCARLI Digital Collections is a repository for digital content created by member libraries of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) or purchased by the consortium for use by its members. CARLI Digital Collections is a growing image and special collections research resource.
- Saskia Art Images Collection This link opens in a new windowOn campus user: click on “Browse from ON campus” to access;
The Saskia Art Images Collectioncontains 30,000 images of paintings, sculpture, and architecture, including many from important museum collections across the globe, as well as archaeological sites around the Mediterranean. Descriptive data includes references to the occurrences of these images in 19 major art history texts.
Online Media
In addition to academic databases, both public and private sources are making digital content available online.
- Wikimedia CommonsA database of 29,460,574 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. These are not necessarily art images, but it can be a good source for buildings, outdoor monuments, and architecture.
- The Digital Public Library of AmericaDPLA is a major cultural heritage site that brings together the digitized resources of institutions all over the United States, including hundreds of thousands of images.
- EuropeanaPartnering with museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual archives across Europe, Europeana is a huge source of images and other digitized content in Europe.
Museum Collections
Art museums' online collections websites are an excellent place to find images of the artworks they own, or comparative images for other works of art you may be studying.
Here are several large, useful collections (with image numbers as of July 2017):
- The British Museum1,017,886 records with images
- The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)678,676 records with images
- Smithsonian SIRIS Image Galleryover 530,000 records with images
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art447,997 records with images
- The Art Institute of Chicagoover 95,000 records with images
Copyright
Intended to protect the creative output of authors and other artists, copyright is an evolving acknowledgement of ownership. As new methods of expression are developed, and new ways to transmit information grow in acceptance, determining what can be copyrighted and by whom is no longer as straightforward as it was at the doctrine's inception, when it was applied only to "maps, charts, and books."
A full discussion of copyright is beyond the scope of this guide, but it should be noted that simply because you can download an image does not mean you are free to use it without limitation; the object itself may have no copyright protection, but its image may be licensed by an institution or photographer. Generally speaking, fair use exceptions are made for certain purposes, including academic research, but it is the user's responsibility to understand any potential copyright issues.
The College Art Association publishes a comprehensive guide to understanding Fair Use and Copyright in the visual arts, as well as a broader discussion of Intellectual Property and the Arts.
You can also consult the LibGuide on copyright, or contact the library's subject specialist.