Painted Skies: 10 Years of Baroque Ceiling Painting

Ceiling paintings shaped the interiors of the early modern period like no other artistic element. For the past ten years, the “Corpus of Baroque Ceiling Painting in Germany” has been dedicated to the systematic cataloging, documentation, and research of these unique artistic treasures. The focus is on preserved and historically documented works from the period between 1550 and 1800—ranging from churches and monasteries to castles and aristocratic palaces, and even bourgeois buildings.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the diverse and complex pictorial programs are analyzed and preserved for future generations through high-resolution photographs and 3D models. At the same time, the corpus of Baroque ceiling paintings combines innovative methods from the digital humanities with cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality, thereby opening up new perspectives on this outstanding cultural heritage.

The BAdW project, with research units at the Institute of Art History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the German Documentation Center for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, is funded by the Federal Government and the states of Bavaria and Hesse through the Academies Program.