Medieval and Renaissance Painting on the Web

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We feel a need to issue a brief apology. The eclecticism of some of the art sites, especially of the ones that are essentially indices themselves, mandates that we reference them more than once (i.e. on the architecture and manuscript pages as well as on this one), so please forgive the redundancy.

I have realized that this index of web image sites will probably be of most use to someone with at least a little knowledge of art. It should be particularly useful to someone just looking for nice pictures or to someone with a specific artist or image in mind. I am afraid it will be of little help to someone doing a dreaded undergraduate Renaissance art paper. If these are your circumstances, I would recommend starting with Janson's History of Art and coming here to perhaps find some higher quality reproductions of images found in that or another text.

Museums:
• Louvre. An impressive site, providing access to some scholarly articles on the collections as well as to sample images.
• San Matteo National Museum: This musem in Pisa boasts both painting and sculpture from late medieval and Renaissance Europe.
• Uffizi. The site of the great museum for Renaissance Italian painting in Florence, Italy.
• Vatican Museum. Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi is an impressive site indexing just about all things Roman Catholic (though the designer reminds the visitor that it is not the official site of the Holy See). It includes some impressive images, including ones of Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel, and the Raphael Stanze and Loggio, as well of the collections of the Vatican Museum. (You will need to go to the bottom of a page after clicking on link to find the indices of images.)

Hopefully these sites will have a good deal of stability since the museums presumably have proprietary rights over their own images.

Web Image Archives:
• Carol Jackson Presents...Fine Art. This site has tons of images and a fair amount of text, at least in the sections on "Featured Artists."
• The Blu & Web Galleria d'Arte. This site lists an impressive collection of artists, though there seems to be only one image per artist. What text there is in Italian.
• Web Gallery of Art. An interesting site produced in Hungary. Approximately 1000 images of Renaissance art, accompanied by text. Particular attention has been paid to exhibits on Piero della Francesca and Giovanni Bellini.
• WebMuseum, Paris. Though this site is not as far as I can tell connected to any physical museum, it acts like one by featuring special exhibits in addition to its general collections.


Indices:
• Art History Resources on the Web. A monstrous art history resource, divided chronologically and geographically. Many of the images referenced are those of the WebMuseum, Paris.
• The History of Art Virtual Library This site (maintained by the the History of Art Department at Birkbeck College, University of London) indexes a number of other sites, many of which are small and display relatively few images. Some of the sites indexed, however, are enormous art historical resources.
• Yahoo's Art History Subject Listing.

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