The Italian Renaissance Document Site (IRDS) has been launched at http://irds-project.org. With support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation’s Digital Resources Grant Program, this website makes available full transcriptions of primary documentation for ten Italian Renaissance artists: Piero della Francesca, Benozzo Gozzoli, Benedetto Bonfigli, Pietro Perugino, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Luca Signorelli, Giovanni Santi, Francesco di Giorgio, Neroccio de’ Landi, and Raphael. It has an English and an Italian language version, and every document is accompanied by details of its location and a basic bibliography, acknowledging the transcription author as appropriate (in some cases transcriptions have been supplied, in others published transcriptions have been followed, and the project team were also responsible for numerous new transcriptions or for revising published transcriptions from the original). There is a full-text search facility, and the increased richness of the database allows students and researchers to make connections in this documentation more easily than before. The flexibility also allows for documents to be added, or transcriptions corrected, in the future and there are plans to add photographs and possibly translations, as well as to extend the number of artists included.
This project has been directed by Tom Henry, Professor of History of Art at the University of Kent and Director of the University of Kent, Rome. Three researchers have worked on the project: Margherita Cinti, Matteo Mazzalupi and Valentina Ricci-Vitiani.