Collections of Art and Architecture on the Web
Because of its origins, this page still has a strong Renaissance emphasis, but I am enlarging it to be useful for all periods and styles of Western art and architecture. Some great new architectural sites have appeared on the web!
Painting Sculpture Architecture
PAINTING
Artcyclopedia: The Guide to
Museum-Quality Art on the Internet
- an excellent resource. Search for artists alphabetically, and
bring up a list of links to all the good-quality images of their works on
the web. Fantastic idea!
Carol Gerten Jackson
- the work of several years, this site holds a now enormous
collection of high quality images scanned by Carol Gerten herself. Images
are indexed alphabetically by artist and geographically by date. Do not
link to the images, or you will bring down her server! Link to the index
pages only.
The Web Gallery of Art
- a very useful collection of images catalogued alphabetically by
artist. Excellent scans and plenty of them. Bit thin outside Renaissance and Baroque. Incredibly slow.
Alta Vista Image Search
- a remarkable and unpredictable resource, it will lead you to an incredible range and quantity of material, much of it professional and therefore for sale only. But great for personal research, and useful when you want to be sure of copyright permissions too.
Google Image Search
- as with Alta Vista, a huge and unpredictable range of material.
Olga's Gallery
- very useful resource indeed. Includes restorations that aren't yet well-represented on the web and images that tend to be omitted from other collections. And also very useful, each image links to a brief explanatory text about the relevant myth, saint, legend, or whatever.
The Web Museum, Artist
Index
- very patchy but worth checking out. Mostly text, but can have
quite good images.
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Orazio Centaro's Art Images on
the Web - Painters
- alphabetical index pointing to resources on the web - therefore
patchy in quantity and quality, but a useful resource.
Mark Harden's Artchive
- a good resource, if increasingly complex.
The Tigertail Museum -
Entry Floor
- a virtual museum with patchy quantity and quality, and a number of
the pics seem rather "rosy" to me.
National Gallery
of Art, Washington
- wide range of images; their scans are glorious and often
include blown up details. Very nice site.
Art Online
- an Italian site but fairly easy to navigate. Use the pull-down menu on the left to choose an artist.
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SCULPTURE
THAIS - Renaissance
Sculpture
- an enormous collection of images listed alphabetically by artist.
This site is very slow because all the thumbnail images are grouped on a
single page per period. But give it time. They are excellent images.
THAIS - Baroque
Sculpture
- again by THAIS, and has the same problems as the link above, but
this is probably the most complete collection of Italian Baroque sculpture
on the web.
Orazio Centaro's Art Images on
the Web - Sculptors
- alphabetical directory to collected sources on the web. Images
vary in quality and are patchy in quantity, but a useful resource
nonetheless.
The
Digital Imaging Project - Sculpture and Architecture - an indexed
collection of links to sculpture and architecture. Nice scans, but the
collection is incomplete. Good place to start for sculpture, but you will
need to supplement it.
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ARCHITECTURE
BIG Buildings
- fantastically useful and high quality site for mostly modern architecture and some historic. Take time to explore it fully. It has large collections of excellent images inside and out for each building except for the historic section which is rather notional. Can be slow, but worth it.
Vitruvio.ch
- a good starting point for architecture, sorted by architect, type, period and location, and with links to specialized sites. Good quality pics and information.
Great Buildings Online
- this project is still developing, so it has some tremendous stuff and then suddenly lets you down. Always worth checking, though.
Glass Steel and Stone
- useful and wide ranging site for modern and historic architecture. The photos are all taken and owned by the site author or submitters so can be somewhat grainy, but useful and rare nonetheless.
Magnificent Views with High Voltage
- now here's something interesting: a site full of photos of pylons. You do really want to see these, for art historical and plain enjoyment reasons.
Daniel's Manhattan Architecture
- lovely site indeed. Beautifully reorganized. Great pics.
Early Century Manhattan
- also from Daniel above, but an interesting collection of older Manhattan architecture.
About.Com Great Buildings
- has links to a range of stuff that lead to mixed quality pages, including some interesting material.
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