Conference paper presented March 25-26, 2011.Giovanni Mariacher, the esteemed museum director and professor of art
history, left his collection of photographs to the Civic Museums of
Padua at his death. My survey of this archive last summer underlined
the breadth of his expertise and the extent of his scholarship, which
spanned all aspects of the arts of the Veneto. Even when the visitor
doesn't find what he had hoped to, the photo archive can provide new
perspectives on familiar objects and issues, offering as it does a look
through the lens--or through the shoebox--of another. While I did not
find the trove of photographs of unpublished sculpture from Veneto
private collections that I might have hoped for, the photographs of
sculpture that I did find, mostly of familiar objects in the museums of
Venice and Padua, provided new insight to issues of condition,
attribution, and display. The paper will outline some fresh starts
suggested by photographs of sculpture in the Mariacher archive, and
reexamine the scholar's writings on sculpture in light of his collection
of images.Research for this paper supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
summer photo archives research grants, 2010. Conference supported by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the NYU Humanities Initiative, the IFA
Visual Resources Collections, and Princeton University, Department of
Art and Archaeology, Visual Resources Collection