What is the Census Database?

Primarily, the Census database reconstructs relationships between Antique Monuments and Postclassical Works. For example, the Census links the antique statue of the Apollo Belvedere now in the Vatican Museums with prints, statuettes, texts, and drawings created in the postclassical era that reference or respond to this statue. Thousands of similar relationships are mapped by the Census dataset, shedding light on the reception of antique material culture as well as a history of the postclassical survival of antique ruins and remains.

The core strengths of the Census database are:

• Its large collection of images of Antique Monuments and Renaissance works of art, particularly images of Renaissance drawings and sketchbooks.

• Its unique specialisation in tracing the relationships between Antique Monuments and drawings, prints, and texts created between 1400-1600.

• The long history of the Census project, which has grown continually for over 75 years and benefitted from close collaboration with international institutions (the Getty, the Warburg Institute, New York University, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana).

• It long-standing ability to provide a stable reference point for a field of research that has developed 'between' the established fields of archaeology and art history.