Knight, Death and the Devil
1513 · Engraving on laid paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C
One page per work of art: what it is, where it was found, whose hands it passed through, where it has been shown and what it has made at auction. Every claim cited.
Newest record
Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi'khtiraq al-'Afaq (The Tabula Rogeriana)
Muhammad al-Idrisi · Text completed 1154 CE at Palermo; no manuscript copy earlier than c. 1325 survives
Completed in 1154 for Roger II of Sicily, the Nuzhat al-Mushtaq is a seventy-map Arabic geography compiled by the Andalusi scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi from fifteen years of interviews with travelers, verification by agents sent into the field, and the inherited framework of Ptolemaic and Balkhi-school geography.
No single original survives. The text is preserved in roughly... · Verified 15 September 2026 · 12 sources cited
The records
All 273
Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey
August 1835 · Photogenic drawing negative: paper sensitized with silver...
National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
Priam's Treasure
c. 2550-2250 BC · Gold
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia, permanent...
The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol
c. 1792 · Oil on canvas
Private collection, United Kingdom
The Great Wave, Sete
1857 · Albumen print from two wet-collodion-on-glass negatives
La Pendaison (The Hanging), plate 11 from Les Miseres et les Mal-Heures de la Guerre
1633 · Etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Drawings...
The Lindisfarne Gospels
c. 700-721, most narrowly argued as c. 715-722 · Ink
British Library, London
Itinerary from London to the Holy Land
c. 1250-1259 · Pen and ink line drawing with tinted colour washes and gold...
British Library, London
From the desk
The StudyMuseums and Exhibitions
The Buyer in the Credit Line Was Already Dead
Thirty-two objects in this archive were bought on the income of six named endowment funds, and in every case the person named had died before the purchase. What a credit line records and what it hides.
The Buyer Who Was a Crowd
Ten objects in this archive were bought, or fought for, by public subscription between 1892 and 2025.
10 min read
The First Link Is in the Maker's Own Hand
A maker's bill, workbook or memoir is the only provenance document that fixes date, cost and first owner at once.
10 min read
The Lot That Did Not Sell
Six objects in this archive were offered at auction and not sold. An unsold lot is a price nobody paid and a date the object went...
10 min read
The Estimate Is the Newest Part of an Auction Record
Of 214 auction results in this archive, 52 carry a published pre-sale estimate.
9 min read
The Object With No Maker
Eighty-nine of the 266 objects published here name nobody as their maker.
9 min read
The Last Link Is the Strongest One
Documentation in a provenance chain rises from 63 per cent at the earliest links to 96 per cent at the most recent.
10 min read
An Exhibition History Holds Four Different Events
One hundred and eighty-six exhibition entries across 60 records, and they are not one kind of thing.
9 min read
An inscription is read on a date, not seen
Six objects in this archive carry writing that settled what they are. In every case the reading is an event with a date and a...
10 min read
The makers
All makers
Abraham-Louis Breguet
1747-1823
Albrecht Durer
German, Nuremberg · 1471-1528
Alexander Gardner
Scottish-American · 1821-1882
Amedeo Modigliani
Italian · 1884-1920
Andre-Charles Boulle
French · 1642-1732
Andrea Amati
Italian (Cremonese) · c. 1505-1577
Antonio Canova
Italian (born Republic of Venice) · 1757-1822
Antonio Stradivari
Italian (Cremonese) · c. 1644-1737