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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Classical Archaeology & Art: Image Databases

Classics-Specific Collections

Arachne

Arachne is the central object database of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Cologne Digital Archaeology Laboratory (CoDArchLab) at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne. 

 

Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser (Perseus)

Perseus's open-access browser encompasses over 1,300 coins, 1,900 vases, 2000 sculptures, 179 sites, 140 gems, and more than 420 buildings. Each catalog entry has a description of the object and its context; most have images. Descriptions and images have been produced in collaboration with many museums, institutions, and scholars. Catalog information and keywords have been taken from standard sources, which are cited in the entries for each object.

 

Classical Art Research Centre

The Classical Art Research Centre leads and supports research on ancient art. At its heart is the Beazley Archive, which includes the world's largest collection of images of ancient figure-decorated pottery. The Beazley Archive's online databases and our other web resources are freely available through this site.

 

Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum

The Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum consists of a series of high-quality catalogs of mostly ancient Greek painted pottery in collections around the world. The first fascicule appeared in 1922 and since then almost 400 have appeared, illustrating more than 100,000 vases in 24 countries. The digitized catalogs can be viewed and browsed through this site, which also provides links to the fully searchable Beazley Archive Pottery Database.

 

Pompeii in Pictures

A complete photographic plan of ancient Pompeii as it is today, produced by Jackie and Bob Dunn.

 

Ubi Erat Lupa

The picture database Ubi Erat Lupa contains stone monuments (sculptures, reliefs, inscriptions, architectural pieces etc.).  Lupa is a non-commercial project dedicated to informing scientists and interested laypersons. The project’s scope is from prehistoric stone monuments to around the time of Justinian (500 AD). Due to its inception in Vienna, most project data at the moment is from the mid- and south-eastern European region.

 

General Collections with Classical Content

Alinari

The Fratelli Alinari, established in Florence in 1852, is the oldest company in the world in the field of photography and communication through images. We possess over 5,000,000 photographs that document the history of Italy and the world from the mid-1800s to today.

 
Art Resource

Art Resource, the worlds largest photo archive of fine art, offers a range of material from prehistoric times to the present. We carry the works of almost every major museum in Europe, and function as the official rights and permissions representative for many institutions in the United States and abroad.

 

Artstor Digital Library

The Artstor Digital Library is an extensive and representative visual resource of images for teaching and research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The collection has thousands of images of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts, including pottery, sculptures, and coins. Institutional authentication is required.  

 

BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

BASE is one of the world's most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 140 million documents from more than 6,000 sources.


Europeana

Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitized items – books, music, artwork and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for.


Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers.