The collection includes digitized reproductions of photos coming from national photographic archives, such as the Fototeca Nazionale, but also from purchases or donations from museums, private archives and auction houses. Before digitization, the archive included mostly b/w prints on paper: gelatin silver prints, albumen
prints, carbon prints, collotypes, photogravures, with a smaller section of color prints and transparencies. Depicted topics range from architecture to sculpture, mosaic, painting, manuscript illuminations, ipainting and jewelry.
Extent
The analogic fond of Federico Zeri archive derives from the cooperation of the scholar with the American art historian Bernard Berenson, which led to the creation of one of the world‘s widest private image archives on the History of Art. The total amount of pictures is over 290,000 items, documenting paintings, sculpture, archaeology and applied arts. Not all of these pictures pertain to Byzantine artworks and monuments, but the number of images included in the Byzart repository from the Zeri archive is quite considerable (1247 items).
History
Collection pertaining to the Fondazione Zeri archive
