Galleries of special Image

Bruno Paul: Frankonia (Wandmosaik), Nürnberg, Hauptbahnhof, Wartesaal, 1905, photograph: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/ Uwe Gaasch 10.2012 (Photo No. fmd471245)

EU Project "Partage Plus"

Since March 2012, the German Documentation Center for Art History - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg has been taking part in „Partage Plus“, an EU project on digital documentation of works from the art nouveau period. The results are being published in "Europeana", the major portal on European cultural heritage. To this end, digital photographs and access data on a total of 75,000 works of art and architecture in art nouveau style will be collected into a common database up to February 2014.

As one of the twenty-three project partners in seventeen European countries, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg has the special task of digitizing around 10,000 items collected in various museums in Germany and enhancing the access data. In addition, selected works of architecture from the German art nouveau period are to be recorded in 2,000 photographs. The third task is to develop uniform technical terms for all European project partners.

In charge of the EU project: Collections Trust, London (UK).

German project partners (as of November 2012):
Bröhan-Museum, Berlin (DE)
Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt (DE)

Project management in Germany:
Dr. Christian Bracht, Tel. +49 (0) 6421 28 23 604

Contact:
Christiane Pagel M.A., Project Coordination | Tel. +49 (0) 6421 28 23 600

Partage Plus 2012-2014 | Co-funded with support from the European Commission

More on "Partage Plus"

Data stock of the German project partners

Braubach, Marksburg, begun in 1231, view from the north. Photograph: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/Thomas Scheidt, July 2012 (Photo No. fmd469312)

Restoration of the Marksburg completed

The Marksburg stands enthroned on several levels above the town of Braubach. It is the only medieval hilltop castle in the Middle Rhine region that was never destroyed, and has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Rhine Gorge since 2002. Many consider this impressive fortress, with its keep, great hall, outer ward, kennels and bastions, as well as characteristic interior rooms, such as the castle kitchen, knight's hall, ladies' chambers, chapel, armory, watchtower chambers or wine cellars, to be the epitome of medieval castles. For more than a hundred years, the facility has been owned by the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung (German Castles Association), which has set itself the task of not only preserving castles from ruin, but also saving them from unprofessional renovation.

The expensive, highly complex restoration work begun in the late 1980s in cooperation with the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments was completed this past summer.

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg documented the ongoing results of the repair work done from 2011 to 2012 and also has a valuable store of historical black-and-white and color photographs of the castle complex.

Die Deutsche Burgenvereinigung e.V. (DBV)

Image Collection

Nicholas Grimshaw, Exhibition Hall 3, Frankfurt am Main, 2000-2001, photograph: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Waltraud Krase 2002

Visit us at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair

We will be exhibiting, and inviting visitors to talk about book publications, image databases, photography campaigns or takeovers of photo archives.

The picture opposite was taken by the Frankfurt architectural photographer Waltraud Krase, whose outstanding oeuvre, which extends to 30,000 photographs, we were able to add to our archives. Here we see the high level of artistry with which this photographer documented examples of major international architecture. It illustrates the structure, materials and dynamics of the organically vibrant glass and steel construction as convincingly as the structural function and interplay with the reflection of Frankfurt's landmark Tower, illuminated for the evening.

Frankfurt Book Fair, Hall 4.1., Stand J 511

Gallery of the Archives - Waltraud Krase

The Blessed at the Last Judgment, Bamberg, Cathedral, Prince's Portal, Tympanum (Detail), c. 1230. Photograph by Walter Hege, c. 1927, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Neg.-No. 147.856

"Blessed Smiles and Hellish Laughter – Laughter in Medieval Art and Culture" Exhibition at the Episcopal Cathedral and Diocesan Museum in Mainz from April 27 to September 9, 2012

Ever since the novel "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, it has been well known that laughter could be a delicate affair in the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, monastic circles considered loud, excessive or foolish laughter to be reprehensible in the Early and High Middle Ages, and it was often equated with hellish laughter. When various of Aristotle's writings describing laughter as an essential human characteristic resurfaced, a more positive opinion of laughter asserted itself in the thirteenth century before the passionate devotion of the Late Middle Ages began to hold crying in higher esteem and once again to disparage laughter.

This exhibition is the first to take up this topic, presenting outstanding medieval works of art, including prominent sculptures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as reliefs by the Naumburg Master from the former rood screen of Mainz Cathedral. Medieval authors are allowed to speak for themselves in early printed books and illuminated manuscripts, tapestries and works of the goldsmith's art round out the presentation of the theme. In the exhibition catalog, articles by well-known experts provide an overview of the social evaluation of laughter from ancient times to the Late Middle Ages; the artworks on display unfold the whole panorama of medieval laughter.

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, a partner of the Episcopal Cathedral and Diocesan Museum, is taking part in the exhibition and catalog with more than fifty historic photographs.

www.dommuseum-mainz.de
Image Collection

Villa Tugendhat (1928-1930), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, dining area. Photograph: Foto Marburg, Dr. Franz Stoedtner Archive, Neg.-No. 1.183.884, 1930/1931

Since March 2012, the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, one of the major works of modern architecture, is once again open to the public.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) designed the building to be a prestigious home for Fritz and Grete Tugendhat. Only a few years later, the couple had to emigrate to escape the Nazis. The villa was plundered and left to fall into disrepair for decades after. Added to the UNESCO World Heritage list early as 2001, it was lavishly and thoroughly renovated beginning in 2010.

Today's visitor finds once again the fascinating elegance and simplicity of the spacious rooms, marked by the circumspect use of valuable building materials. On the contemporary photograph from the Franz Stoedtner Archive, we see the elegantly curved partition of Macassar Ebony separating the dining area from the rest of the living space as it originally appeared. Its costly veneer was lost for many years, only being rediscovered through a fortunate coincidence in a student cafeteria at Brno University.

Image Collection

Nicolaus Gerhaert, self-portrait (?), 1467, sandstone, height 41 cm, Strasbourg, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame. Photo: Helga Schmidt-Glassner (Neg. No. 1.556.729), photographed 1950/1960

Under this title, the Liebighaus in Frankfurt am Main will be presenting until March 4, 2012 more than seventy sculptures from international collections, including sculptures verifiably ascribed to him and works by members of his circle and his successors.

Nic(o)laus Gerhaert von Leyden, a Dutchman presumably born c. 1430 in Leiden, began working in Strasbourg in 1462 and died in Wiener Neustadt near Vienna in 1473. He is undoubtedly one of the major late medieval artists. His works in wood and stone exhibit convincing workmanship, a proximity to life and a strong spatial effect, and their innovative quality can still be admired today. Famous sculptors such as Tilman Riemenschneider, Veit Stoß, Michel Erhart or Michael Pacher would have been inconceivable without him.

A central work in his oeuvre is the stone portrait bust in Strasbourg Cathedral, which is presumed to be the artist's own self-portrait. The impressive chin in hand motif has been seen as a gesture of deep thought and melancholy since antiquity.

Exhibition

Nicolaus Gerhaert in the image index

The exciting relationship between architecture and photography is the subject of an international conference being held by the German Documentation Center - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg from November 10-11, 2011. It will seek to point up the reciprocal effects of interaction between the oldest of the new visual media and the most monumental of all forms of artistic creativity.

The first point of debate will be the photographic image of modern and contemporary architecture, including its modification under the conditions prevailing in the world of digital media. Various points of view will be considered to discuss the historiographic context of architecture-photography and to analyze the role it has played in the process of designing architecture, as well as in the presentation, communication and marketing of architecture.

Presentations by well-known photographers will be addressed to assess the extent to which the photographic perspective on architecture can be seen as an artistic interpretation and at the same time as documentation.

Tagungsflyer

In the age of digital media, research is looking ever more closely at the historical dimension of analog photography. Negative and print are appearing in a new light, and are increasingly becoming the object of research into art, media and history.

Recently, the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg has also begun viewing its inventory increasingly in this light. In the process, we have been focusing more on our own collection of photopositives, a systematically catalogued “critical apparatus for art history” which has been growing since 1889, serving the needs of teaching and research for decades. This collection contains not only a large number of generally well-preserved photographic prints, but also especially rare and valuable specimens from the early days of documentary and travel photography as a historical art form.

Since mid-September, the virtual exhibition “Salt, Silver and Paper – Early Photopositives in the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg” has been displaying a selection of these works. The aim of the presentation, which was conceived and prepared as an upgradable project in the course of a seminar at the Philipps University in Marburg, is to make the material available to a larger section of the general public and pave the way for further research.

In 1911, freethinking entrepreneur Carl Benscheidt contracted the as yet unknown architect Walter Gropius to build a shoe last factory in Alfeld an der Leine. The new, unadorned objectivity and clear esthetics of the Fagus Factory, which was built in two phases, had an epoch-making effect on modern industrial architecture.

Gropius, who later founded the Bauhaus School, designed a group of buildings made up of clear cubes organized by function. The outer walls of the main building dissolve almost entirely into windows covered over by curtain-like stories and corners, giving the factory building a lightness as yet unknown at the time. By separating the hidden, structural framework and the curtained, transparent surface, Gropius anticipates the curtain wall, which more than a decade later was to become a salient feature of the “Neues Bauen” style of architecture. On July 25, 2011, around 100 years after construction began, the UNESCO declared the factory, which is still in operation, to be a World Heritage Site.

As early as 1981, only a few years before its first extensive renovation in 1984, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg documented the plant, which had been declared a historic monument in 1946.

Image Collection

Rheinfelden (Baden), Altes Wasserkraftwerk, Maschinenhaus vom Schweizer Rheinufer aus, Conradin Zschokke und Otto Intze, 1895-1899, Foto: Foto Marburg, Thomas Scheidt 2010, Neg. Nr. fmd454552

The Alte Wasserkraftwerk hydroelectric plant in Rheinfelden in the state of Baden, Germany started operating in 1898 and was the oldest and largest hydraulic power station in Europe. Built according to the blueprint of Swiss building engineer Conradin Zschokke, its 20 turbines provided German and Swiss communities with 10 MW of electric power for more than a century, making it a nucleus of today’s Europe-wide power grid. The 150-meter long power house with facades in a historicized style and furnished with unique equipment, as well as a steel frame bridge over the Rhine (210 meters), was considered a technically and architecturally outstanding industrial monument. Against all opposition, which came primarily from historians and curators, it was demolished in the autumn of 2010, when energy provider EnBW began running its new plant.

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg documented the outdoor installations of the building complex in June 2010, before the demolition.

Image Collection

Wikipedia

Cathedral Museum in Hildesheim, reliquary in the form of the head of St. Oswald from the cathedral treasures, Hildesheim c. 1185-1189, silver, parcel gilt, niello, filigree, enamel, stone and pearl trimming, oak core, height 45.5 cm. Inv. No. DS 23.
Photo: Foto Marburg/Cathedral Museum, Hildesheim Neg.Nr. dmhds23_05

For the first time, the most famous examples of religious art from late antiquity to the late Gothic period from the Cathedral Museum in Hildesheim and the Berlin Arts and Crafts Museum are being exhibited together, facilitated by the renovation work currently ongoing at the two museums. From September 2010 to September 2012, the museum is opening its basement to visitors, where they can see a Medieval treasure chamber featuring outstanding works carved from ivory or made by goldsmiths, as well as book illuminations. On display are not only cimelia from the manuscript department of the Berlin State Library, but also one-of-a-kind works from the renowned Guelph Welfenschatz, the Basel Münster, and the Church of St. Michael and the Cathedral in Hildesheim. Some of the best pieces from Hildesheim are a large gold Madonna, a silver Bernward Cross, two Bernward candlesticks or the reliquary in the form of the head of St. Oswald.

Along with the cathedral and the church of St. Michael, the Hildesheim cathedral treasure is also considered a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. The associated image archive of the cathedral museum in Hildesheim has been on permanent loan to Bildarchiv Foto Marburg since 2010 and is accessible in the online image index.

Exhibition, Treasures of the Faith

The Cathedral Museum in Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

London, Wellington Arch (Decimus Burton, 1883) with Quadriga (Adrian Jones, 1912), in front, a detail from an artillery monument. Photo: Foto Marburg, taken by Reinhart Koselleck c. 1980.

While preparing for a publication in 2002, Reinhart Koselleck wrote that his photographs were not always of the best quality, except for a few of the more “original”. Roughly 30,000 pictures on political iconography and iconology in general, and on violent death in particular, including war memorials and equestrian monuments, as well as holocaust memorial sites, found a place in Koselleck’s picture collection. However, this is by no means merely a purely iconographic collection of motifs. Rather, Koselleck’s own photographs in particular testify to the critical potential of a political form of iconology. In this sense, political iconology is also a matter of viewpoint and perspective. The chosen photo was taken in London around 1980. It shows Wellington Gate with Quadriga, in a broken perspective and thereby “brought back down to earth”, so to speak, along with an “unknown soldier” (cf. also Koselleck, Reinhart: “Der Unbekannte Soldat als Nationalsymbol im Blick auf Reiterdenkmale” (“The Unknown Soldier as a National Symbol with Regard to Equestrian Monuments”), in: “Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus“, vol. 7, 2003).

In the spring of 2009, the Deutsche Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg took over the collection of pictures left by Reinhart Koselleck, a historian who died in 2006, while the written works went to the Deutsche Literaturarchiv Marbach. These two institutions are working together on the inventories and making them accessible to researchers. Now for the first time, a convention will be held in Marburg from November 18 – 20, 2010 to present the initial findings of research into the topic of “Reinhart Koselleck – Political Iconology” and to discuss them in a broader interdisciplinary setting.

For the convention website

Stuttgart Central Station, southeast wing, Paul Bonatz.& Friedrich Eugen Scholer, 1911-1928, Foto: Foto Marburg, Rose Hajdu 2009, Neg. Nr. fmd445859

Stuttgart Central Station was built between 1914 and 1928, and was designed by architects Paul Bonatz (1877–1956) and Friedrich Eugen Scholer (1874–1949). The building unites traditional elements of prestigious monumentality with progressive features exhibited in the compositional principle or the largely flat roofs. This monumental structure is therefore considered to be a representative of the so-called “Other Modernism”, which played a significant part in the architectural history of the twentieth century.

Although an historic monument, this terminal station is slated to be torn down to make room for an underground through station which is part of the controversial traffic and urban development project known as “Stuttgart 21”. Recently the side wing of the building has already begun to be demolished in spite of vehement protests.

Bildarchiv Foto Marburg commissioned a documentation in the summer of 2009 to record the original state of this endangered historic building in photographs showing the outer facades, along with important details, as well as views of various interior rooms.

zum Bestand

Günter Behnisch : Munich, Olympic stadium, photo: Foto Marburg, Neg. No. B 16/5

Born in Leipzig in 1922, the famous German architect Günter Behnisch studied architecture in Stuttgart and set up his architect’s office there in 1952. Closely allied to his many innovations in structural engineering were his ideas of building “for people”, with the non-hierarchically structured, open and transparent configurations which put their stamp on the shape of buildings in post-war Germany. He gained worldwide renown with the Olympic Park in Munich (1967-1972), whose key feature is the daring, floating tent roof construction he developed together with Frei Otto. The plenary assembly room of the German parliament in Bonn (1992-1993) provides further prominent testimony to the creative quality of this “master builder of German democracy”. From 1967 to 1987 he was a professor at the Technical University in Darmstadt. Until 2000, he taught at the Sächsische Akademie der Künste (Saxon Academy of the Arts) which he had helped to found in 1996 in Dresden .

Günter Behnisch died at the age of 88 on July 12, 2010. The photo series compiled by Bildarchiv Foto Marburg in 1972 documents the Munich Olympic buildings just before the completion of construction.

zum Bestand

Hagen, Folkwang Museum, exhibition room, paintings by Emil Nolde and Lasar Segall, combined with ancestral portraits from New Guinea (taken around 1920). Photograph: Foto Marburg, Neg. No. 625.684

Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874-1921), a collector and patron of the arts, brought together an exquisite collection of non-European sculpture and classic modern works for the Folkwang Museum he had founded in Hagen in 1902. By designing his collection as a confrontation of non-European art with Expressionist works, he raised to the rank of high Western art artifacts which were otherwise only displayed in an ethnological context.

Since 1921 Essen has been the home of the Folkwang Museum. The current exhibition, marking the museum’s reopening, shows the collection’s treasures in the combination of avant-garde art and sculptures of antiquity, the Orient or tribal societies in Africa and Asia, as conceived by Osthaus.

The “Photographien- und Diapositivzentrale” (“Photography and Slide Center”) housed 20,000 photographs on the collection founded in Hagen, as well as on selected art works of many countries and epochs. Among the focal points of this educational portion are also works of Expressionism and Impressionism, arts and crafts, Art Nouveau and examples of non-European art. In 1933, four years before the Nazis confiscated key works from the Essen collection, ownership of the renowned photo archive was transferred to Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.

The Osthaus Archive in Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

Exhibition ‘The Most Beautiful Museum in the World’

Stadtarchiv Cologne, order number 7010 (W) 312, fol. 10v: illustrated page in the Gospel Books from St. Pantaleon, around 1140. Photograph: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Michael Jeiter, around 1980 (Negative No. fmc439791)

The first anniversary of the collapse. The Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, the largest municipal archive north of the Alps, boasted until 2009 more than 65,000 documents, 26 kilometers of shelves filled with files, 104,000 maps, 50,000 posters, 818 estates and collections, and more than 1,000 medieval manuscripts. Owing to irregularities in the construction of the underground rail system below the archive building, it collapsed on March 3, 2009.

The cultural loss is equal to that of the catastrophe of Weimar, where the Anna Amalia Library burned down in September 2004. In the meantime, 85 percent of the archives have been recovered, including most of the medieval manuscripts. The damage is currently calculated at 35 percent severe and 50 percent heavy to moderate damages to the objects.

In memory of the archive catastrophe and as part of the German nationwide Day of the Archive on March 6-7, around 100 loans from the inventories of the Cologne Stadtarchiv are on display in the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin, including Albertus Magnus’ “Liber de animalibus” (13th century) and the St. Pantaleon Book of Gospels shown here. In addition, the exhibition intends to provide information on the extent of the destruction and the restoration work.

Although the originals are irreplaceable, their pictorial documentation is of key importance. Nearly all papers and documents in the archives dated prior to 1815 have been documented in around ten million pictures on more than 6,000 microfilms and are kept permanently safe in the central underground archive of the Federal Republic of Germany, an enlarged mine shaft near Freiburg i. Br. Later inventories, by contrast, were not entirely put on film, and only a few have been digitized.

Around 2,750 photographers from the Rheinisches Bildarchiv in Cologne and the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg are documenting objects from collections in the Cologne Stadtarchiv. Our picture shows a high-resolution color picture kept in Marburg of an illumination from a superb twelfth-century manuscript.

Note on exhibition:
Cologne in Berlin. After the collapse: the Historical Archive.
March 6 to April 11, 2010
Berlin, Martin Gropius Building
http://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/de/aktuell/

Istanbul, Hagia Sophia (construction started in 532, dedicated in 537) seen from the southeast, picture taken by Richard Hamann-Mac Lean, 1955

The vote of the international jury of the European Union for the first city of a non-member state underscores the significance of this city on the Bosporus as a center of both European as well as oriental art and architecture.

Founded 2600 years ago as Greek Byzantium, the city had grown by the late Roman period into an important center of trade marked by dynamic building activity, finally becoming Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire. From the tenth to the twelfth century, the then only world-class city in Europe enjoyed a new heyday. Following the Ottoman conquest in 1453, Stambul (called Istanbul since 1930) became a melting pot of oriental and occidental culture whose art has been developing vigorously up to the present day.

The last great work of architecture in late antiquity, Hagia Sophia – which was built in the form of a domed basilica during the rule of Justinian I in the sixth century – began to be used as the coronation church of Byzantine emperors starting in 641. With the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the church was converted into a major mosque. Since 1934, the building has been used as a museum.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach and Hugo Höppner in the studio, taken by Carl Teufel, c. 1889

A unique collection of more than 370 photographs on the Munich Artist’s Studio has been part of the inventory of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg since 1935. The pictures, taken by Carl Teufel (1845-1912) in 1889-1900, represent a valuable cross-section of the Munich studio culture of Historicism. The unusual example shown here features the eccentric painter, pacifist and proponent of the Lebensreform back-to-nature movement Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913) together with his pupil Hugo Höppner (referred to as “Fidus”) in his studio.

The Villa Stuck in Munich will be hosting the exhibition “Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – Lieber sterben, als meine Ideale verleugnen!” (“ – I’d rather die than repudiate my ideals!”) until January 17, 2010. This is the first time a comprehensive selection of the works and rebellious cultural ideas of this artist and ‘prophet of nature’ have been displayed.

Berlin Palace, start of construction 1443, final appearance 1699-1706 by Andreas Schlüter, destroyed 1950/1951, oblique aerial photograph taken 1920/1940

Just in time for the German federal elections, the conflict surrounding the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace, which was thought to have been decided, has flared up into a new phase. The Federal Antitrust Office recently declared the contract between the builder, the Federal Government, and the winner of the competition, Franco Stella, to be invalid on grounds of legal defects. The start of construction on the "Humboldt Forum" planned for 2010 has thus been put off for now. Now the Agency for the Preservation of Historical Landmarks is going to intensify its demands that the preserved Baroque foundations and cellar of the West Wing be integrated into the planned new building, which the developer has so far rejected for financial reasons. Along with the comprehensive evidence on the history of the Hohenzollern Castle, which an ongoing archeological investigation around the Eosanderhof has been bringing to light for more than a year, additional evidence of a late medieval settlement is suspected to lie below the area of the court.

Balthasar Jenichen, Portrait of the Humanist Scholar Philipp Melanchthon, 1577, etching, 14 x 11.5 cm, Marburg, University Museum

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation; DFG) has recently approved the application for the project "Digital Index of Early Modern Portrait Prints". The project is located at Bildarchiv Foto Marburg and eight further partner institutions. The objective of the project is to digitalize and index more than 200,000 portraits from seven major collections. The Austrian National Library is its foreign partner. All data and images will be made available free of charge by way of a dedicated portal on the internet. The "Digital Portrait Index" is tied in with library information infrastructure through a link to the personal name file (PND) of the German National Library.

The copperplate engraving shown here is an example of early modern portrait art, an image of humanist Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560). Along with Martin Luther, Melanchthon was a theologian who served as one of the driving forces of the Reformation in Germany and Europe.

Digital Portrait Index

Walter Gropius: Former state Bauhaus Dessau, view into the stairwell in the workshop, 1925-26, photo fmc440924 of 1990. Photographer: Gert von Bassewitz

Flooded with light, well suited to the materials and functional down to the smallest detail: this is Bauhaus architecture, as can be seen here in the stairwell of the former State Bauhaus in Dessau. Architect Walter Gropius created the building in 1925-26 for his school of architecture, design and art.

What was new about this building were the differently designed parts of the structure, in which areas such as workshop or teaching institution were functionally separated and at the same time combined in a single building complex. The Curtain Wall, the workshop's facade visible here from the inside, which is made entirely of glass to provided transparency and airiness, also created a stir.

The Bauhaus idea of reuniting architecture and handicraft was developed six years earlier, however. Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the State Bauhaus in Weimar. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is putting on a comprehensive exhibition for the anniversary.

www.das-bauhaus-kommt.de

Collage of photographs from the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

Is there anyone who is not familiar with Dürer's 'Adam and Eve', the Villa Rotonda or the Bamberg Horseman? Are these examples of a group of art works that are especially well known, or especially important to art history? The science of art deals with classification- or judgment-related questions like these again and again. In the process, experts not infrequently refer to a canon of art history, which is not only asserted, but also called into question and even challenged.

At the XXXth Art History Convention in Marburg from March 25 to 29, 2009, the canons of art history will once again be discussed and deliberated.

The Deutsche Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg will not only be presenting itself there with an exhibition stand, but will also be taking an active part in the sections and forums.

Elisabeth Clothing the Naked, Marburg, Church of St. Elisabeth, Elisabeth Window. Cologne (?), around 1245-50, photo fmc426930 made in 1998.

The glass window showing 'Elisabeth clothing the naked' is part of the Elisabeth Window made around 1245-50 in the choir of the Church of St. Elisabeth in Marburg. The twelve medallions depict scenes from the life of St. Elisabeth and her deeds for the poor and sick, portrayed in the Christian works of mercy. In this scene, with its radiant colors and animated design, Elisabeth is draping a coat with full sleeves over a scantily clad man, while a barefoot woman carrying her son and a man with crippled legs raise their hands in supplication to the saint.

This window, among others, is discussed in the richly illustrated Volume 3 of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Deutschland Series, now enhanced by the latest research: Parello, Daniel: Die mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien in Marburg und Nordhessen (Medieval Stained Glass Paintings in Marburg and North Hesse), Berlin 2008.

Andrea Palladio: Villa Pisani in Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza), garden facade, built starting in 1542, photograph: Gert von Bassewitz, 1990

The Villa Pisani near Vicenza is one of the many villas in Veneto created by Andrea Palladio, one of northern Italy's major Renaissance architects. The 500th anniversary of his birth was celebrated on November 8, 2008.

The villa, which was begun in 1542, was the first country residence built by Palladio to meet agricultural needs as well as the upper-class standards of his influential employers. As with many of his other buildings, he turned to antiquity for inspiration.

This photograph shows the very simply designed back view of the villa, from which a wide stair leads to the rambling country estate. This picture, so full of 'atmosphere', is one of the roughly 4,500 color photographs on architecture in Europe which photographer Gert von Bassewitz gave to Bildarchiv Foto Marburg in 2007.

Portrait of Reinhart Koselleck. Bielefeld City Archive, photographer: Jobst Lohöfener

The German Documentation Center for Art History - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, together with the German Literature Archive in Marbach, has received the estate of the Bielefeld historian Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006). Both institutions are going to index the estate and collection, make it available to researchers and undertake their own research. Koselleck's extensive collection of pictures and other material related to political iconography, which is now in the care of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, contains pictures of war and other memorials, equestrian statues and objects associated with the history of violent death, as well as the topics of power and dominance.

Frankfurt am Main, Liebieghaus, Myron's Athena, Roman copy of a bronze group from around 450 B.C.E., inventory no. 195, marble, 173.5 cm, photograph: Foto Marburg, c. 1937

The stone "Frankfurt Athena" is part of the best preserved Roman copy of a lost group of Athena and Marsyas from around 450 B.C.E. which was originally made of bronze and stood on the Acropolis in Athens. The Greek sculptor Myron here combines several elements of the myth of Marsyas. What gives the work its extraordinary artistic quality is its innovative interpretation of the figures' movement.
For the reopening of its restaged antiquity collection, Liebieghaus has brought together the legendary Myron group – Athena is placed together with sculpture of Marsyas, also Roman and a loan from the Vatican museums to Frankfurt. The special exhibition "Launen des Olymp. Der Mythos von Athena, Marsyas und Apoll" ("Whims of Olympus. The Myth of Athena, Marsyas and Apollo") will remain on display up to September 21, 2008.