The Historical Photographic Archive of the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts and Performing Arts at Sapienza University is composed of several thousand reproductions of works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and applied arts. These materials were collected over the course of nearly a century by the university’s art history faculty and represent the oldest and most extensive collection of its kind in Italy.

The archive consists exclusively of photographic positives and currently includes approximately 2,800 large-format phototypes (30x40 and 40x50 cm), around 65,000 medium-format items (21x27 cm or smaller), and about 35,000 glass slides (8x8 cm). Additionally, there are roughly 6,000 film slides (35 mm) and around 2,700 microfiches (105x148 mm), along with an unspecified number of microfiches and slides acquired from the 1980s to the present.

The phototypes were produced using various techniques, the most common being pigment prints, albumen prints, and silver gelatin prints. They are attributed to a wide range of authors, including some of the most prominent Italian and international photographic firms specializing in art reproduction active between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Alinari, Anderson, Brogi, Naya, Bulloz, Giraudon, Moscioni, Hanfstaengl, and Braun.

The origins of the archive date back to the 1890s, coinciding with Adolfo Venturi’s appointment as a lecturer at Sapienza in 1890. With the establishment in 1901 of the first chair of Art History in Italy, Venturi paved the way for the academic and scientific development of the discipline, of which the archive is a tangible testament.

The image collection was initially created for teaching purposes, starting with large formats suitable for group viewing, followed by the use of slides, which served as a complement rather than a replacement. The collection continued to grow during Venturi’s tenure (he retired in 1931) and under his successors, beginning with Pietro Toesca. Systematic accumulation began to decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as technological advancements introduced new teaching tools and materials. The process came to a definitive halt in the 1990s, when the digital revolution rendered these materials obsolete and ended their regular use.

Over the years, the collection changed location several times, following the developments of the university and the Art History chair. Initially housed in the Palazzo della Sapienza, the Venturian School and its iconographic materials were managed by the Alessandrina Library. In 1909, the School moved with the Faculty of Letters to the adjacent Palazzo Carpegna. On that occasion, Adolfo Venturi established the Art History Cabinet, linked to the chair and immediately appointed as its director. This marks the official beginning of a specific and autonomous archive connected to the Venturian School, which also incorporated previously collected photographs. With the construction of the University Campus in 1935, the archive reached its current location within the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, where it is still preserved today.

The current institution known as the Historical Photographic Archive was formally established in 1987 by Angiola Maria Romanini, then director of the Institute.

Activities and Projects

The archive was first studied between the 1980s and 1990s. Professor Stefano Valeri, who has been responsible for the archive since 1987, investigated its historical origins and initiated a reorganization and cataloguing project, which led to several publications, exhibitions, and conferences.

More recently, a new and systematic project for the study, inventory, conservation, and digitization of the archive has been carried out under the scientific direction of Professor Ilaria Schiaffini, who became the archive’s director in 2017.

The project, launched in 2014, initially focused on the large-format section, the oldest and most valuable part of the collection. The first phase involved inventorying and pre-cataloguing the entire section, conducted in 2015 by Dr. Emanuela Iorio, and a major conservation effort, including analysis, cleaning, and reconditioning of materials, carried out between late 2017 and 2018 by restorer Federica Delia. Both activities involved student groups and were transformed into educational opportunities, in line with the mission of the institute to which the archive belongs.

The results of this first phase were presented in an exhibition at the Museum-Laboratory of Contemporary Art, titled The Photographic Archive of Adolfo Venturi at Sapienza (held from November 23, 2018 to January 12, 2019, curated by Ilaria Schiaffini and Maria Onori). The exhibition included in-depth research on the large-format photographs and their initial cataloguing, later published in a catalogue of the same name.

A second phase of the project, focused on the more extensive medium-format section, was launched in 2018 by Dr. Camilla Federica Ferrario as part of her doctoral research and led to a full survey of the section. A significant selection of large-format items was digitized, enriched with metadata, and indexed by archivist Letizia Leo for the Sapienza Digilab research center.

Selected Bibliography

• Stefano Valeri (ed.), Adolfo Venturi e l’insegnamento della Storia dell’Arte, Exhibition Catalogue (Rome, Museum-Laboratory of Sapienza University, December 15, 1992 – February 13, 1993), Rome, 1992
• Stefano Valeri (ed.), Adolfo Venturi e l’insegnamento della Storia dell’Arte, Conference Proceedings (Rome, December 14–15, 1992), Rome, 1996
• Stefano Valeri, La memoria riprodotta, Rome, 1997
• Ilaria Schiaffini (ed.), La fototeca di Adolfo Venturi alla Sapienza, Exhibition Catalogue (Rome, Museum-Laboratory of Contemporary Art, November 23, 2018 – January 10, 2019), Rome, 2018