Welcome to the Royal Society Picture Library

The Royal Society Picture Library is an online database of digital images of paintings, drawings and prints held in our collections. It has been created to inspire the exploration of science through its visual history.

Browse and search rare, intriguing, beautiful and often surprising pictures selected from the collections of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy.

Images will be added to the website on a regular basis so keep checking back to see what’s new.