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European History

This guide focuses on resources for researching European History during the Medieval, Early Modern and Modern periods.

Image Collections

  • ARTstor
    ARTstor currently provides access to over two million images, which may be viewed in a variety of ways and exported for presentation purposes.
  • Art Museum Image Gallery
    Images and related multimedia from the museum collections around the world. Included are sculpture, paintings, drawings and cartoons, posters, prints, woodcuts, photographs, costumes, textiles, ceramics, furniture, etc.
  • Google Art Project
    The project makes it possible to visit 17 of the world's most important museums virtually. The visitor may view "hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels" and create a personal Artwork Collection.

Art Databases

  • Art Index (aka Art Abstracts)
    Search for articles in journals, museum bulletins and yearbooks on fine and applied arts, including architecture and archaeology.
  • Art Retrospective
    Search for articles which appeared in art publications from 1929-1984.
  • BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art) / RILA
    Search the most comprehensive bibliography of scholarly writing about art. Books, conference proceedings, dissertations, exhibition and dealers' catalogs, and articles from over 4,300 periodicals all are indexed. International in scope, the database includes numerous sources not in English. The time period covered is 1975-2007.
  • JStor
    JStor is not an art database, but a gateway to more than 170 art and art history publications. Advanced Searching will probably give the best results. Caution: JStor rarely contains articles published within the last five years, but has excellent retrospective coverage.