Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History

Leeuwenhoek's specimens and original microscope reunited in historic photoshoot

After ten years of construction, the Bibliotheca Hertziana has opened its new premises. More than 300 guests from the German-Italian cultural life, politics and Curia attended the ceremony in Rome.

The volcanic cone of Vesuvius looms over Naples – as both a landmark and a fateful reminder for the southern Italian metropolis. For centuries, its eruptions and earthquakes have left their mark here. Elisabetta Scirocco, a researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, examines how these natural phenomena have shaped the city’s art and architecture.

Every city map, and every map in general, contains stories about the time at which it was produced. At the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome, art historian Tanja Michalsky is studying how people have measured the world. Her research is expanding the area covered by her subject and even includes films by Federico Fellini and David Lynch.

Caravaggio is one of the most influential artists of the Early Baroque. He is especially well known for his dramatic lighting effects. The technique he used to create these was something he guarded like a trade secret. As a result, legends surrounded the painter even during his lifetime. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Director at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, has taken on the task of demystifying Caravaggio’s image.

Today, cityscapes generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are omnipresent in advertising, property development, films, video games and social media, flooding our imagination with attractive, realistic depictions of cities – or dystopian visions. But what do these images mean and what cultural and social impact do they have?

At the Bibliotheca Hertziana (dep. Weddigen), a research project investigates the social and material history of colonial objects, bringing to light the dynamics of violence and power that have left their mark. It also looks at the potential role of these objects in today’s transcultural society. In collaboration with the anthropological Museo delle Civiltà, the team participates in the museum’s process of decolonisation, unveiling the political use of its collections in the Fascist era. 

A research project led by the Lise Meitner Group at the Bibliotheca Hertziana is exploring waste, heritage and the links between the two. Taking a historical approach, it analyses the ways in which by-products of early modern artistic processes were not wasted but rather reused, often in other objects. The group also takes a contemporary view, reflecting on the role waste as a cultural product has played and continues to play in shaping our societies. The group’s ongoing “Wastework” initiative ties both these research strands together.

This research project provides an analysis of the different cinematic representations of Neapolitan urban space across the first half of the XXth Century – from Fascist Cinema up to the Early Sixties. The analysis focuses on how the image of the city has been constructed by films throughout these decades. The recurrent features of Cinematic Naples have been identified and analysed under the categories of temporality and spatiality in order to attest how Naples can be considered a unique setting for Italian cinema.

A medieval church was a complex system in which spaces, objects and decorations provided the framework for the liturgy but also the scenario for a variety of other social activities. By integrating archaeometric analyses into research methods of archaeology and art history and with the help of digital technologies, a project of the Bibliotheca Hertziana investigates forms, functions and the aesthetics of medieval sacred spaces through digital mapping and 3D reconstructions.