About Us
The founder and her trusty Canon in Oxford.
Stalking standing stones: Hurlers, Cornwall.
In the mikveh of Worms' Old Synagogue.
Atop Casablanca Cathedral, Morocco.
Thank you for visiting Art History Images! Here is some information about this website.
Launched in November 2009, Art History Images is a specialized image library for art, architecture, history, archaeology and travel. Our contributing photographers are distinguished by their special interest and artistic eye for our particular subjects. (Contributing is currently by invitation only.)
The collection grows almost daily, bringing us ever closer to our goal of assembling the most comprehensive image database of historical art and architecture online. We hope this database will be a useful resource to teachers, students, editorial publishers, researchers, religious leaders, or anyone who shares our interest in these fascinating places.
Art History Images is distinguished from most other stock photo libraries in the following ways:
Broader and Deeper Coverage. Our unique specialization allows us to cover more sites and more details than most stock image providers. We don't just cover the most famous monuments, but also lesser-known gems of artistic, architectural or historic significance. For most monuments we provide not only the standard tourist views but also closer looks at sculptures, mosaics, paintings and stained glass in all their glorious detail.
Detailed Information. Because the contributors to this website are passionate about art, architecture and history as well as photography, our images have detailed, knowledgable captions and highly specific keywords that make it easier to find what you need. In addition to basic location data, virtually all photos are labeled with dates, artists, styles, and topics. And for western art, we use the Iconclass system of classification in our keywords.
Thematic Browsing. In addition to a robust search engine, we offer browsable galleries arranged by topic. This allows you to not only discover the best photo of your desired subject, but perhaps some artworks or places you may not have even known about. Browsing subjects like "Baroque" or "11th Century" or "Crucifixion" can be a valuable tool to research a topic or stimulate creativity.
Personal Service. We have tried to make the Art History Images website as modern and efficient as possible, but this does not mean real humans are hard to find. We take care of all orders personally and you can e-mail us anytime with questions or requests for image research, details about a photo, special licensing needs, photo editing (we'll do most minor adjustments free with purchase), comments about the website or anything else. You can contact us here.
Reasonable Licensing Fees. We license our images free of charge to teachers and students for certain educational uses. For editorial use, our licensing fees start under $100 and depend on usage. Please see the Pricing page for more details. We do not usually license photos for commercial uses.
Art History Images was founded by Holly Hayes of Portland, Oregon. Holly has a master's degree in ancient religious history from Oxford University and is an amateur enthusiast of art history. She is also the founder of Sacred Destinations, which provides information on religious monuments, and Go Historic, a travel guide to history, architecture and art (launching soon).