Research Guides: Object Research: Images

Reverse Image Searching

Often you can identify a work of art by reverse image searching - uploading a picture of the artwork you have and searching for matches.

Google Image Search
Click the icon of a camera to upload an image to reverse search.
Pharos
A consortium of photo archives have made portions of their collection that focus on Italian art reverse searchable.

Large Cross-Institutional Image Databases

ARTstor
Database of over one million high-quality images, useful not only for the fine arts but as a general image resource.

Wikimedia Commons
Database of millions of freely usable image and media files.
Creative Commons Search
Can a search a variety of web databases for creative commons licensed content
Digital Public Library of America
Brings together the digitized images and media of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
Europeana
An internet portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
The digitized images from the Library of Congress includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
Wellcome Library
Over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are freely available through Wellcome Images. All CC-BY
Flickr Commons
Collection of openly available images.
Shared Shelf Commons
A free, open-access library of images.
Smart History Flickr Photos
High quality art photos curated by Smart History, available under creative commons licenses.

Museum & Library Collections Online

Many museums have started making high quality images downloadable without permissions (for art objects in the public domain). The following museums have made at least some of their images available for free re-use. You can explore a database of museums with Open Access image policies at the OpenGLAM website

Metropolitan Museum of Art
NYPL Digital Collections
Items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections.
Smithsonian Collections
Search across the diverse collection of Smithsonian Institute museums.
National Gallery of Art Images
Getty Open Content
LACMA Collections
Rijksmuseum Collection
Cleveland Museum of Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
CU Digital Library

Some museums restrict access to high quality images, and only allow smaller images to be downloaded. To get the high quality images you may need to request permissions and sometimes pay a fee.

Summer 2023: Major System Updates

You'll notice some changes as we work.

New Library Catalog: try it out and tell us what you think
Prospector will be unavailable from May 19 through Spring 2024.

Full details on our library services platform migration project & timeline.

Ask A Librarian

Make an appointment

Chat with a Librarian

Email libraries@colorado.edu