451 boxes
Inside the boxes, documents and photos are grouped in folders, in topographical / chronological / alphabetical order. The arrangement given by the art historian has been maintained.
The archive consists of some 85,000 items of which about 45,000 are paper documents (including letters, typewritten lists, photocopies of articles, postcards, drafts and handwritten notes) and 39,800 photographs (especially gelatine silver prints, diacolors and few albumen prints). Photographic and non-photographic materials are divided into 4 archival series: "Italian art" (414 boxes); "Non-Italian art" (5 boxes); "Fakes" (7 boxes); "Various" (25 boxes). Inside each series, documents and photos are kept inside folders bearing the artists' names, sometimes sub-divided according to repositories of artworks and/or iconographic themes. The versos of photos are richly annotated by Everett Fahy with information regarding locations, attributive and collective history, bibliography, etc. The archive provides an extraordinary documentation on Italian Art and, especially, on the research field Fahy favoured: Florentine 15th century painting. About 151 boxes out of the 451 are devoted to this topic, to which are added 59 boxes bearing the names of Florentine artists of different centuries. Other well illustrated cultural areas are: Tuscan schools (Sienese, Pisan, school of Lucca and Arezzo), the Roman school and Venetian school. The value of the collection is gains greatly from the original order given by the art historian, which reflects Fahy's attributions, and also from the presence of his correspondence and notes, especially the famous "Lists" that he compiled and frequently updated, in which he used to itemize all the artworks to be attributed to each artist.
contents
People and organizations
Federico Zeri John Pope-Hennessy David Freedberg Andrea de MarchiArtists, schools, periods
Renaissance Apollonio di Giovanni 15th century 14th century 16th century Sandro Botticelli Domenico Ghirlandaio Bartolomeo di Giovanni Michele Tosini Biagio d'Antonio Jacopo da Sellaio Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio Fra Bartolomeo Benedetto GhirlandaioGenres and themes
portrait painting polyptych Christian iconography ancient history mythology fresco cassone panel paintingOther contents
archive Florence history of art albumen print Tuscany Sienese School Lucca Arezzo Handwritten Notes Venetian school Sistine Chapel Tornabuoni Chapel Santa Fina Chapel Sassetti ChapelThe origins of archive should date back to the years of Fahy's university studies. The oldest documents, infact, are linked to his contributions on Ghirlandaio's school and followers (his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic dates 1968). Fahy continued to order and use the materials he collected till the very late years of his life, even after his retirement. In 2017 he decided to give as a gift the main part of his archive (376 boxes) to the King Baudouin Foundation United States. The KBFUS undersigned a loan agreement with the Federico Zeri Foundation, whose scientific commettee Fahy joned in 2004, to keep, manage and enhance the collection. After his death, the remaining materials were also received by the Zeri Foundation who, according to Fahy's will, is going to become the final owner in 2022.
The Federico Zeri Foundation has drawn up an inventory of the collection contents. It follows Fahy's criteria and provides an immediate hierarchical map of the archive as a whole. All the iconographic material has been counted and inventoried with a univocal, progressive number fixing Fahy's original ordering of documents and photographs inside folders. A description of all the levels of the archival system is available in "Explore the collections" database of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The Foundation has started cataloguing the Florentine 15th century boxes item by item. Data on artworks and photos is incorporated in the Fototeca Zeri's online catalogue (http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it).
De Marchi, A. (2018, April 27th). Ricordo di Everett Fahy: vivere e godere le opere d’arte giorno per giorno. Storie dell'Arte (online blog). Retrieved April 27, 2018, from http://www.storiedellarte.com/2018/04/ricordo-di-everett-fahy-vivere-e-godere-le-opere-darte-giorno-per-giorno.html
archival description
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda.livello.jsp?decorator=layout_resp&apply=true&locale=it&tipo_scheda=fondo&id=3online catalog
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/ricerca.v2.jsp?decorator=layout_resp&apply=true&percorso_ricerca=F&sortby=AUTORE&batch=10&view=list&locale=it&UBFS=16The collection is a must for all researchers interested in Florentine painting and offers an outstanding overview on all medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Italian art.
Nucleous of documents and letters produced by Fahy can be found in many archives of museums and private collectos. Numerous copies of Everett Fahy's famous "Lists", for instance, are preserved in Fototeca Zeri.