Photo Library: digitization of all glass plates stored in their original historic cabinets
The digitization program of all the photographic plates on glass, kept in the original cabinets of the Vatican Museums' Photo Library, has been concluded, and they may finally be consulted on the web thanks also to a meticulous and parallel cataloguing process.
The project – coordinated in its various phases by the Head of the Scientific Service, Paola Di Giammaria – was undertaken in November 2016 at the behest of the Director Barbara Jatta, and involved the precious and substantial historical collection of around 41,000 plates, carefully safeguarded in the 36 historical files dating from 1932.
The results of a first phase in the process of digital transformation were presented and shared in 2021 on the occasion of the conference “The Vatican Museums Photo Library. Technology and conservation in the service of knowledge”, as part of the Thursdays in the Museums programme.
Today, the Pope’s Museums have reached a new and important milestone with the completion of the complex and structured plan to secure, restore, archive and digitize the priceless collection of historical photographs, now made available to the international scientific community for more autonomous, modern and comprehensive consultation (with over 10,000 plates accessible online).
Because of its extraordinary historical and artistic value, the Vatican collection of plates on glass constitutes the Museums' beating “heart”: a total of 50,000 unique precious specimens, with subjects ranging from the works and environments of the papal collections to landscapes, monuments, palaces, churches, and archaeological excavations in Rome, as well as other Italian localities, covering a time span from around 1860 to the 1940s. Leading the way is the Moscioni Collection - consisting of some 15,000 plates by photographer Romualdo Moscioni (1849-1925), which arrived in the Vatican Museums in the early 1930s - along with specimens from equally well-known dynasties of photographers, such as the Alinari, Anderson, Brogi, Danesi, Faraglia, Felici and Sansaini.
The final work on the remaining lot of around 9,000 plates, largely coming instead from storage deposits, such as the unpublished specimens from the Moscioni and Danesi Collections, and from new acquisitions (Busiri Vici Collection) has already been scheduled.
