Research Projects
 A 14th Century Catalan Triptych (37.468)
Art historical, scientific, and technical research contribute to the careful treatment of this very rare and significant Spanish altarpiece, attributed to a Catalan Master. The large Gothic triptych titled The Madonna and Child with the Crucifixion, the Annunciation, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Coronation of the Virgin is a striking example of Italian influence in Spain. (Carmen Albendea, Jennifer Giaccai)
Online Database of 19th-century French Drawings
The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum have catalogued their collections of 19th-century French drawings in a searchable online database that makes approximately 900 rarely displayed works accessible to scholars and the general public. Visit this unique resource online at www.frenchdrawings.org.
Users can search the database by artist, title, provenance, subject, and date, and store their results in a virtual gallery of images. A highlights tour allows visitors to glimpse key works of art from the database. The website allows albums of works on paper assembled by collectors (many of which have been taken apart for conservation purposes) to be “reassembled,” preserving the collectors’ arrangements. Rarely displayed artists' sketchbooks are also illustrated online, allowing viewers to “flip” through the pages.
Eureka! The Archimedes Palimpsest
www.archimedespalimpsest.org
The subject of this website – the Archimedes Palimpsest – is a manuscript of paramount importance to the history of science. This 10th-century manuscript is the unique source for two of Archimedes' treatises The Method and Stomachion, and it is the unique source for the Greek text of On Floating Bodies. Discovered in 1906 by J.L. Heiberg, it plays a prominent role in his 1910-15 edition of the works of Archimedes, upon which all subsequent work on Archimedes has been based. The manuscript was in private hands throughout much of the twentieth century; it was sold at auction to a private collector on 29 October1998. The owner deposited the manuscript at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore a few months later. Since that date the manuscript has been the subject of conservation, imaging, and scholarship. The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, as it is called, has generated a great deal of public curiosity, as well as the interest of scholars throughout the world.
Dressed in Gold: Books of the Italian Renaissance
http://www.waltersmanuscripts.org/voyager.cfm
This site is an illustrated catalogue that highlights the Walters Museum collection of 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century Italian illuminated manuscripts. The site allows you instant access to over 400 folios (pages) of 29 manuscripts produced in Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence and Naples during the Italian Renaissance.
The Walters’ Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Scarabs Project
The Walters Art Museum houses an outstanding collection of some 150 ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern scarabs, most of which have been unrearched and unpublished. The scarab – a representation of the dung beetle (Scarabaeus sacer) – was by far the most important amulet in ancient Egypt. The insect, which lays its eggs in a ball of dung, was associated with the sun god, represented as a beetle rolling the solar disc through the heavens with its front legs. Scarab amulets were used as seals, royal gifts, or commemorative objects for both the living and the deceased.
The main goal of the first phase of the Walters’ Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Scarabs Project has been to distinguish modern imitations or forgeries. The second phase comprises research into the origin of specific pieces, dating the objects as specifically as possible, determining the functions of each of the scarabs, and defining the significance of these amulets. A publication of the museum's collection of Egyptian and Near Eastern scarabs is planned for 2006.
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