Oxford LibGuides: Art History for Continuing Education short courses: Finding images

Finding images

You may wish to find images, both for your own study and to illustrate assignments. It is easy to find free images on the internet using tools such as Flickr and Google Image search. However, when using tools such as these, you need to be aware of both quality and copyright issues.

The box Copyright at Oxford, on the right, will help you to explore these issues in more depth.

For a fully comprehensive guide check the following LibGuide:

Art and Architecture
by Sarah Currant Last Updated Feb 28, 2025 423 views this year

If you use image databases purchased by Oxford University, you will be assured of a higher quality product, and images on these databases are copyright cleared for educational use.

In the box below some key image databases for History of Art. To find others, go to Databases A-Z, choose the Subject tab, select Art and Architecture, then Images.

If you wish to use image databases at home, you will need to use your Single Sign On (available to all students with a full University card)

Remember that images need to be cited, just as other material you refer to in your assignments.

Key digital images databases

ARTstor
Oxford has a subscription to this prestigious database of over 1 million images from the world's leading museums, photo archives, art galleries and libraries (including the Bodleian).

ARTstor enables you create your own image collections and use them in presentations. If you register for an ARTstor account on a PC connected to the Oxford network, you can use ARTstor at home without using a Single Sign On.
Alternative name: ART stor

ARTstor is a non-profit initiative, founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields. The ARTstor Digital Library Charter Collection is a repository of hundreds of thousands of digital images and related data and the tools to actively use those images.
The ARTstor Library is a collection of collections. It is the product of a growing number of collection development partnerships with individuals and institutions in the US and abroad. The ARTstor Library may be searched as an integrated whole or by its constituent collections.
Users of ARTstor may not use the content in ARTstor for any commercial purpose, including incorporating content in print or electronic publications distributed through a press (whether commercial or non-commercial). Additionally, users may not distribute widely ARTstor content, such as through unrestricted websites.
Bridgeman Education
Bridgeman Education is a subscription database of 300,000 images from museums, galleries and private collections worldwide, from pre-History to the present. All images are cleared for educational use. Single Sign On needed for access at home.
Alternative name: Bridgeman

Bridgeman Education is an expanding resource currently comprising over 300,000 images representing objects from museums, galleries and private collections, as well as buildings and monuments. Its images cover visual culture worldwide, from pre-History to the present day. Media covered include photography, fine art, engravings, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, artefacts and applied arts. It addresses the interests of such disciplines as art, architecture, archaeology, anthropology, & ethnography, history, science & medicine.
All images are cleared for educational use.
Index of Medieval Art
The most important and largest archive of medieval art anywhere in the world with particular emphasis and focus on art of the western world.
Alternative name: Index of Christian Art

The Index of Medieval Art (formerly Index of Christian Art) was founded by Professor Charles Rufus Morey (1877-1955) in 1917 and it is now the most important and largest archive of medieval art anywhere in the world. Nearly two thousand works of art are added to the archive on an annual basis.
The Index records works of art produced without geographical limitations from early apostolic times up to A.D. 1400 (extended in the case of the Morgan and Princeton Library projects to include this manuscript holdings up to the end of the sixteenth century). As is to be expected, there is a particular emphasis and focus on art of the western world. Seventeen different media are represented in the archive, and these include manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, painting, glass, and so forth.
VADS (Visual Arts Data Service)
VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 11 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK.
VADS offers advice and guidance to the visual arts research, teaching and learning communities on all aspects of digital resource management from funding, through delivery and use, to preservation.

ArtUK
Art UK is the online home for every public art collection in the UK.

Oxford collections

Ashmolean Museum, Eastern Art Online (Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art)
High quality images of objects in the Ashmolean Museum's Eastern Art Department collections.
Asmolean Museum, western Art Drawings Online
Images of all the Italian, French, French, French Ornament and Russian drawings, as well as some of the English and German drawings held by the Western Art Department's Print Room, Ashmolean Museum.
Ashmolean Museum, Western Art Paintings Online
Images of the Paintings Collection held by the Western Art Department, Ashmolen Museum.
Bodleian Libraries Special Collections
Approx. 35,00 images from a large variety of Bodleian Special Collections resources.
John Johnson Collection of printed Ephemera (Bodleian Library)
Printed ephemera documenting British history. The collection is strongest in the 18th to early 20th centuries but also contains earlier materials.

Copyright at Oxford

Guide to copyright
The Bodleian Libraries' Quick guide to copyright and digital sources.

Joconde

This database is maintained by the French Ministry of Culture for objects in the collections of the main French public and private museums listed as Musees de France.

Joconde