Photoarchive

A large room with fifty windows and a ceiling of exposed wooden rafters and beams.

The Allegorical Frescoes of the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua

The theme of this extensive fresco cycle—which is comprised of more than 300 scenes—is human life as regulated by the heavens.

Standing young male saint in a panel holding a cross and a book and facing left.

St. Lawrence Recovered

The Photoarchive allows researchers to trace the history of a work of art. The image of St. Lawrence by Niccolò di Buonaccorso of Siena, recovered from a later overpainting, offers an instructive example of this crucial aspect of our collection.

Long, triangular abstract painting with texts.

Forgotten Folk Songs

In 1932 Juliana Force, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, commissioned Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) to create a series of eight murals for the library of the museum. While six panels from this series survive, two ceiling panels are unlocated. It is feared that they have been destroyed.

screenshot of the Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities site

Is There a Portrait in Your Past?

Drawing of a cityscape with fortifications and a temple on a hill at right.

The Parthenon in 1667

This detailed sketch, based on George Wheeler’s topographical drawing of 1667, documents the appearance of the Parthenon just a few years before Venetian forces shelled the Acropolis during the Republic’s struggle to take the city from the Ottomans in 1687.