Italian Academies 1525-1700 metadata.This dataset comprises 8598 XML records representing 587 Academies, 7100 people and 911 works. Some of the XML files in this dataset contain links to images, which are available in the Italian Academies Project Database Images dataset: https://doi.org/10.21250/iad2 XML nodes with the ‘ImageId’ attribute contain the filename of an image. The pages of the original project website include information on the design of the database: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ItalianAcademies/ThemedCollectionDatabase.aspx