This collection of photographs of European paintings and sculpture from the Gothic period through the 19th century is especially rich in Italian, Flemish and Dutch works of the 14th-17th centuries, with lesser coverage of the French, Spanish, and other European schools. Developed during the first quarter of the 20th century by Danish author and collector Sophus Michaëlis, this collection originally contained approximately 2,000 photographs of major works of European and Classical art, made by photographers such as Alinari, Anderson, and Bruckmann. Photographs relating to classical antiquities, some of the sculpture, and some northern European painting have been separated from the collection and integrated with the repository's core collection of study photographs.
