The Institute for Art Historical Research (IRSA), in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History, has organised a conference to mark the fortieth anniversary of the creation in Venice of the scholarly art journal Artibus et historiae. The Institute for Art Historical Research, which publishes the journal, was founded in 1979 by Józef Grabski with the support of Jan Białostocki, André Chastel, Federico Zeri, Terisio Pignatti and other celebrated art historians.

The first issue of Artibus et historiae came out in 1980. Since then the journal has published many studies on art history and cinema by some of the leading specialists in the respective fields. In its early years, IRSA and the journal were based in Venice, in the house of the historian of Italian art, William Roger Rearick. Shortly afterwards, the institute moved to Florence and then to Vienna. Finally, in 1994, it settled in Cracow, Poland, where it is still located today. The two-day conference enjoys the support of an advisory and organisational committee made up of Peter Humfrey, Bernard Aikema, Antonio Paolucci, Claudia Cieri Via, Andrzej Rottermund and Claudio Strinati. The conference proceedings will be divided into four sessions, two for each day. The speakers in each session will be a group of the most important internationally renowned art historians who have published papers in the journal Artibus et historiae or books with the IRSA Publishing House. The themes of the papers presented at the conference will focus on the main issues of art history, iconography and methodology, seen from various critical stances.