Full Name: Arndt, Paul
Other Names:
- Paul Julius Arndt
Gender: male
Date Born: 1865
Date Died: 1937
Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Greek sculpture styles, and sculpture (visual works)
Institution(s): Denkmäler
Overview
Private art scholar and dealer of ancient Greek sculpture and portraits. Son of an affluent merchant in Mecklenburg, Arndt studied classical art with Johannes Overbeck in Leipzig and Enrico Brunn in Munich. His dissertation, written under Brunn, focused on Greek vase types. He never attempted a habilitationschrift. Brunn took Arndt for his assistant. Because of his financial independence, Arndt could afford to remain a private scholar. Through his excellent library and nearly unfailing eye, Arndt developed a reputation for recognizing forgeries. As a dealer in Munich, he sold some of the best works of classical art in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhage, the Glyptotek in Munich, as well as Budapest and Yale University. After Brunn’s death, Arndt took over the series editor of the corpus Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Skulptur in historischer Anordnung, which Brunn had founded. Arndt amassed an impressive collection of ancient gems, which is now part of the Staatlich Münzsammlung. Methodologically, Arndt principally employed connoisseurship, and to an amazing degree, much the same as his mentor, Brunn. The Denkmäler make use of photographs, which Arndt was one of the first to use.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Studien zur Vasenkunde. Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1887; Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Porträts, 1891 ff.; 2nd ed. and Lippold, Georg. Brunn-Bruckmann’s Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Sculptur. München: F. Bruckmann, 1932-1947; Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen. München, F. Bruckmann a.g., 1893-1911.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 158-159; Calder, William, III. “Paul Arndt.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 83.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen