Tutorial

We hope that the ways to use this website are self-explanatory, but here are a few suggestions.

At the database level each document is displayed with a Short Title, Date and location information (Location, Sub-Location, Volume Reference, Folio/Page Reference), as well as an annotation of the Type of document involved. Information is also given about the Transcription (who made it; whether or not it has been checked by anybody else) and previous Publication of the document (whether previously published or referred to, if so when, where and by whom). Sometimes additional Notes have been added, and there are housekeeping details of when a document was added or modified. Whenever possible a document has been divided as in the original (e.g. on the recto and verso of a page). This is intended to help with the planned addition in the future of photographs (which can as a result be matched precisely to the transcription), but where previous publication did not have this information and we have not checked the original then transcriptions appear on a single page (for now).

If you want to read documents in their entirety, or browse within a monographic (single artist) context, go to Archive. You will then find a list of artists. Select an artist and you will then find a list of documents by year. Select a year to see a list (in chronological order) of all the documents relating to that artist which were made in that year. Select a document to go to the transcription. At year and document level you can also navigate through the documents in forward or reverse chronological order.

If you know what you are looking for, for example if you want to find examples of particular terminologies, then you can use the Search facility. Type in the term and you will find the examples that are in the database as it currently stands. It is important to consider variant endings and spellings in order to find every reference. Searching with basic word-stems is sometimes advisable. e.g. when seeking all references to ‘gold’, search with the following: ‘oro’, ‘auro’; also with ‘aur’ (this will find the following: ‘auro’, ‘auri’, ‘aurum’, ‘aurium’, ‘aureis’, ‘aureos’ [all wanted] as well as ‘aurifficis’, ‘aurifici’ and ‘Laurentium’ [not wanted: in a subsequent phase the search engine will be refined to be able to try and exclude names]).