This book of essays had its inception in 2016, when we organized a series of three panels at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America. Devoted to ‘Bolognese Art in the Archives’, our three RSA panels investigated various types of archival research that were devoted to the study of Bolognese art, beginning in the late sixteenth century with the Carracci but primarily focusing on the art of the Seicento. This is a rich subject in Bolognese art historiography that has flourished conspicuously during the past two decades, particularly in light of the extensive work on Bolognese inventories that has emerged since 1997. In addition, modern scholars who work on Bolognese art have dealt productively with other types of archival materials, such as artistic contracts, baptismal records, dowries, wills, letters, and many others. But the reliance on various types of documents and primary sources for the study of Bolognese art history is not new. This methodology has a long history, one that reaches back long before the twenty-first century. Probably due in large part to Bologna's academic character, as the site of the oldest university in Europe, many Bolognese writers who were concerned with the art and the history of their native city were characterized by a scrupulous attention to archival resources from at least the seventeenth century. In this short introduction, we will consider some of the principal exponents of this rich tradition, concluding with an overview of the chapters in this volume and some comments about how the research presented here contributes to this singularly Bolognese tradition.