With its origins in the pioneering work of Bernard and Mary Berenson, the Fototeca, or Photograph Archive, has long been celebrated as an outstanding resource for the study of the history of art. Now holding around 300,000 photographic prints and other related materials, the still-growing collection contains photographs of artworks in many media ranging from Antiquity to the middle of the 20th century, focusing on the Mediterranean basin but including other parts of the world. Its spotlight is on Italian art, especially painting and drawing, of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance from 1250 to 1600, and it is only this part of the collection that continues to be developed systematically.
These visual and textual records document the Berensons’ working methods and Bernard's influential career as art critic and connoisseur. They also furnish a wealth of evidence on individual works of art, for instance their passages through successive collections or art dealers’ hands, or traces of restorations over time. The archive's images throw critical light too on such general art historical issues as photography in the service of art history, the history of collecting, and the twentieth-century art market.
The bulk of the library's core photograph collection is arranged geographically and then by artist in chronological order. The Florentine, Sienese, Venetian, North, Central and South Italian schools now are represented by more than 153,000 photographs. An additional 17,000 photographs document Later Italian painting (17th - 20th cent.) and Italian sculpture. There is a vast documentation for this part of the collection, as a single artwork is often represented by multiple prints from different periods. After Berenson’s death many study photo archives once belonging to other art historians or conservators were added to the original nucleus. These include, for example, photographs from Hermann Voss (1884-1969), George Kaftal (1897-1987), Henry P. Clifford (1904-1975), Giuseppe Marchini (1914-1986), Frederick Hartt (1914-1991), Gerhard Ewald (1927-1997), Andrea Rothe, and the Studio Cabras.
For all artists, collection-level records for individual artists or distinct groups have been created and are available through Hollis catalog. These artist files provide a summary description of the holdings in order to facilitate users' research. A significant number of the photographs has been cataloged individually and images and catalog entries are accessible through Harvard Library's catalogs.
Berenson’s wide interests beyond the Italian Renaissance are reflected in his photo collection. Important materials acquired by Berenson or sent to him by art dealers and private collectors are found also in minor sections, which include illuminated manuscripts, Italian sculpture, architecture, and views; later (that is, late 16th- to 20th-century) Italian painting; archaeology; early Christian, Byzantine and medieval art; applied arts; and non-Italian art. Of particular importance are the Asian and Islamic materials, including some 2800 vintage prints from the negatives taken by Islamic architectural historian Sir Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell (1879-1974), and now held by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford.
