ABSTRACT
Adam von Bartsch (1757–1821) was a central figure in the discussion of various models for organising print collections around 1800. No longer understood exclusively as image archives for princely or bourgeois representational needs, prints came to be arranged according to contemporary scientific criteria. Two competing categories in particular will be considered here: ‘chronology’ and ‘school’. These categories were used to create print collections in the service of the history of art, art connoisseurship, the emancipation of printmaking as an art form, and moral education. Ultimately, the uses of the collections went beyond mere classification, contributing to a deeper understanding of the process of art as a more complex system of mutual influences and social factors.
