16.09.2011
Altes Museum
A project organized by the National Museums' Collection of Classical Antiquities, with support from the German Research Foundation.
The bronzes held at Berlin's Collection of Classical Antiquities, listed in C. Friederich's catalogue from 1871 have been accessible to the public online since 2007. These bronzes, mostly Etruscan and Roman in origin, were covered in a digitalization project that ran from 2004 to 2007, which was also supported by the German Research Foundation. The follow-up project now sees the cataloguing of bronzes acquired in the period from 1871 to 1945, this time including a predominant number of Greek bronzes. As a result of the Second World War, a not insignificant number of the artefacts can no longer to be found at the Collection of Classical Antiquities. Wherever possible, however, photographs or drawings from the pre-war inventory catalogues were used to illustrate the lost objects. Thanks to concessions from our Russian counterparts, it was also possible to view bronzes currently held in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and have digital photographs taken of them.
The picture database makes it possible for the first time to gain a comprehensive visual impression of one of the most important areas of the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities. Accompanying the present electronic catalogue of ancient bronzes is an array of new observations on the functions of individual objects, their acquisition history and other details.
At www.smb.museum/antikebronzenberlin more than 8200 bronze, lead and iron objects can now be studied, combined with those objects catalogued in the first project.
Picture database author: Norbert Franken
For more details please contact:
Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer
email: w.heilmeyer@smb.spk-berlin.de
Andreas Scholl
email: a.scholl@smb.spk-berlin.de
Administration: Tel. 030 - 20 90 52 01