Indexing the Early Modern Printed Image

Overview & Synopsis

Between around 1480 until the end of the sixteenth century, the city of Lyon became one of the most important printing hubs in Europe, second in France only to Paris. Developed along the banks of the two rivers Saône and Rhône, placed in a unique strategic position bordering Italy, Switzerland, and the south of Germany, the Renaissance city was a crossover of people, goods, and ideas. In Lyon was published the first illustrated book in France, Le Mirouer de la Rédemption de l’Humaine Lignage (Huss, 1478). Funded by the Equipex Biblissima (CNRS), the project Le Livre Illustré à Lyon (1480-1600) collected a substantial number of illustrated editions printed in the city in the sixteenth century, indexing these illustrations iconographically. The corpus includes more than 3300 indexed images currently hosted in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database. These images also served as material to initiate a digital project in collaboration with the Visual Geometry Group in Oxford and the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities in Venice. In between Digital Iconography, Digital Art History and the History of Collections, the book offers insight into the new methodologies of the Digital Humanities to index, search, and share early modern printed images.