Provenance research and the history of collecting are indeed closely connected and intercommunicating. They often draw from the same sources and documents. They may even cross each other repeatedly within the same research project. Yet, they do not ask the same research questions, and their objects of analysis and results do not fully overlap.

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My experience: two research paths, with several crossroads

Several times in my work as an art historian, I have needed to reconstruct the contents and values of an art collection that is now dispersed, partially moved, or scattered among other seats.

Which artworks composed that collection at a precise moment? Under which collector, family, or institution? In which palace, convent, or collecting space? According to which principles of display, taste, devotion, power, collective memory, or self-representation?

These research questions belong primarily to the history of collecting. They aim to understand the meaning of a collection, the collector’s role, the logic of acquisition, the principles of selection, the internal relations among objects, and the social, political, religious, devotional, or intellectual message expressed through the act of collecting and displaying.

Yet, in order to answer them, I often had to begin with a different research first: with provenance research.

If a collection no longer exists in its original composition and location, knowing the provenance of its objects before, during, and after their documented presence within that collection becomes essential. Provenance research can thus help identify the objects that once composed the collection. It can clarify when and how they entered it. It can therefore help us understand the formation of the collection and also what happened when the collection was dispersed.

In this sense, provenance research may provide the evidence needed to reconstruct the collection. At the same time, the history of collecting may provide the framework needed to understand one stage in the object’s provenance.

But the two research paths and their results do not fully coincide.

Each object that once belonged to a collection has a longer history. It may have carried functions and meanings that preceded or followed their presence within that collection. It may also have acquired new meanings within it, preserving, transforming or loosing earlier associations at the same time. Moreover, after leaving the collection, it may have entered another collection, where its identity, attribution, value, visibility, and interpretation changed again.

A collection can therefore be one context within an object’s provenance. But it is not identical with provenance itself.

Why stating this distinction

The distinction between provenance research and the history of collecting is conceptually clear to many specialists, but it is not always explicitly discussed as a matter of theory and methodology. Institutional resources and literature often place the two fields side by side, while focusing mainly on the operational side of provenance research.

The fundamental Getty Provenance Index, for example, is described as a tool providing “open access to art provenance data”, in order “to trace the ownership history of artworks and analyze art market and collecting trends over time”. Complemented by databases and resources, the Index is described as an instrument to reconstruct both provenance history and analyze the history of collecting and art market trends.1 This is a useful example because the use of the same data does not imply that the same questions are being asked, because it may serve different kinds of inquiry. A record may help reconstruct the trajectory of a single object; the same record, possibly put in relation with others, may also contribute to broader studies of collecting patterns and market trends.

Similarly, the distinction between provenance research and history of collecting can’t be operated only on the base that provenance research is narrowed to the history of an object’s ownership from the moment of creation to the present. This definition is important, but it is not sufficient if we want to understand the value of provenance research for art history and museology.

For instance, The North Carolina Museum of Art’s provenance page defines the provenance research as “the study of an object’s ownership history, from the time of its creation to the present day”, but also adds that it can help “deepen our interpretation of the work’s meaning or influence”.2 Provenance research can deepen the interpretation of an artwork’s meaning, function, reception, and changing identity.

This is also the core from which this “Provenance Research and Art History” publication starts.

No systematic reflection has been clearly dedicated to this distinction so far, so clarifying the distinction is necessary to highlight the methodological peculiarity of provenance research as a discipline, and also how provenance and history of collecting can work together.

A methodological distinction across contexts

The relationship between provenance research and the history of collecting can’t be simplified. It would be inaccurate to say that provenance research concerns only the individual object, whereas the history of collecting concerns only the context. Both fields deal with contexts. The difference lies in the direction of the research.

Provenance research follows the object across contexts, that is, through, within, and beyond the collecting framework.

On the other hand, the history of collecting reconstructs one type of context in which objects were gathered, classified, displayed, interpreted, and valued. It studies the collector’s choices, the cultural and social identity expressed by the collection, the display strategies, and the relations among objects within a specific collecting project.

Stating that an object was formerly in a collection isn’t enough to study the object.

The object may have had previous and subsequent functions, meanings, preceding and successive locations, and identities. Its passage through a collection may have modified its attribution, perceived value, visibility, and cultural role, but it does not exhaust its historical existence. The object may have passed through a chapel, an art dealer’s stock, a painter’s studio, an exhibition, or a deposit. Also these varied contexts can be decisive for understanding the object’s function, visibility, meaning, and historical identity.

For an art historian, the distinction matters because the history of an object does not only correspond to a succession of collection displays. Transfers and recontextualizations can change the way the artwork is perceived and interpreted.

Provenance research becomes art-historical when it does not simply record where the object was, but asks what the object became in each context.

Provenance research and the history of collecting can work together

As I have experienced directly in my academic work, the provenance of an object is not the same as the history of a collection.

They do not begin from the same object of analysis.

Provenance research starts from the object, or even a group of objects sharing the same vicissitudes, and it follows the object or objects through time and space, reconstructing movements, contexts, transfers, and changing identities.

The history of collecting starts instead from collectors or institutions, practices of acquisition, principles of selection, taste, classification, display, and representation. Its primary subject is the collection as a historical, social, cultural, and political message.

However, the two fields can and must work together, and they often intersect.

A collection inventory can document one passage in an object’s provenance. The entrance of an object into a collection can change its status. At the same time, the provenance of a single object can reveal broader dynamics of the history of a collection. Retracing the provenance of the individual pieces of a collection may led to broader considerations of the identity of the collection itself. Similarly, understanding the history of a collection may help explain one chapter in the life of an object.

Therefore, to distinguish provenance research from the history of collecting is not intended to separate them. It is to understand more precisely how they work together. The history of collecting helps us reconstruct the cultural principles behind the collections; provenance research follows the object through and beyond those collections, asking how its identity, meaning, and contexts changed across time.

A collection may be only one stage or one context in an object’s provenance. And the history of the object does not end with that collection.

Defining provenance is a way of deciding what kind of history we intend to reconstruct: the history of a collection, or the changing life of objects through and beyond collections.