Art Historians

Lord, James

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lord, James

Other Names:

James Lord

Gender: male

Date Born: 27 November 1922

Date Died: 23 August 2009

Place Born: Englewood, Bergen, NJ, USA

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): sculpture (visual works) and twentieth century (dates CE)

Overview

Expatriate writer in France and Giacometti scholar. Lord was born to Albert Lord, a New York stock broker and Louise Bennett (Lord). He attended Wesleyan University, but a self-admitted poor student, he enlisted in the United States army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. His facility with French qualified him for Military Intelligence Service af the invasion of Normandy; he was stationed in France. While there, Lord searched out Pablo Picasso in 1944 locating him in his studio on the Rue des Grands-Augustins. Following the war, Lord left Wesleyan with graduating, returning to Paris in 1947, perhaps because his homosexuality might be better accepted there. Despite his sexual proclivities, he entered into an affair with Picasso’s mistress, Dora Maar (1907-1997) after she and the artist were split. He kept meticulous journals of the conversations that he had with nearly all the litterati of post-war Paris. His intention was to become a writer, but excessive socializing kept him from production. Lord met the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti in 1952 at the Café aux Deux Magots, and frequently visited his studio in Montparnasse. The two remained friends throughout the artist’s life. After two unsuccessful novels, Lord was asked to write a book on Giacometti by the Museum of Modern Art to accompany the 1965 retrospective exhibition on the artist. A Giacometti Portrait was hailed a success and is today valued as a source for information and insight on the artist. In 1970 Lord began a full-length treatment of the scultpor, completed only in 1985 and published as Giacometti: A Biography. The book’s frank description of Giacometti’s sadistic tendencies and mental problems drew the ire of many of the sculptor’s friends, who signed a public protest letter against the book. Lord set out to write a series of memoirs based upon personalisties. Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir appeared in 1993 followed by Six Exceptional Women the following year and Some Remarkable Men in 1996. A Gift for Admiration was published in 1998. He adopted his life-companion, Gilles Foy-Lord, officially as his son. While working on a book of his experiences in the army, My Queer War, he suffered a heart attack at his home in Paris and died at age 86. Portraits exist of Lord by Picasso, Giacometti, Balthus, Lucian Freud, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Lord’s style is that of a raconteur and witness to the event itself. All of his writing weaves autobiography, reportage with gossip (Times London). His portraits of his experiences with Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Balthus, Peggy Guggenheim and the art historian Douglas Cooper provide rich documentary evidence on these personalities.

Selected Bibliography

A Giacometti Portrait. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965; Alberto Giacometti Drawings. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971; Giacometti: A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1985; Picasso and Dora. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.

Sources

Lord, James. Picasso and Dora. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993; Lord, James. A Gift for Admiration: Further Memoirs. New York : Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998; Lord, James. Plausible Portraits of James Lord: with Commentary by the Model. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003; Making Memoirs. North Pomfret, VT: Elysium Press, 1995; [obituaries:] Grimes, William. “James Lord, Biographer and Memoirist, Dies at 86” New York Times, August 29, 2009 p. A 19; “James Lord: Expatriate American Socialite.” Times (London), September 28, 2009 p. 61.

Lorck, Karl von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lorck, Karl von

Gender: male

Date Born: 1892

Date Died: 1975

Place Born: Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 246-8.

Loran, Erle Johnson

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Loran, Erle Johnson

Other Names:

Erle Loran

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1999

Place Born: Minneapolis, MN, USA

Place Died: Berkeley, Alameda, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): formal concepts (artistic concept) and stylistic analysis

Career(s): art collectors, artists (visual artists), and educators

Overview

Artist and formal-analysis author on Cézanne paintings. Loran was born Erleloran Johnson. He entered University of Minnesota briefly, between 1922-1923, switching to the the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), where he graduated in 1926. Through the Chaloner Foundation, a body funding the study of “great works of art” by students in the museums of Europe, he continued study on the continent. Johnson became fascinated by the artist Paul Cézanne. Like the Cézanne scholar, John Rewald, Johnson combed the French countryside around Aix-en-Provence, France, photographing the scenes and motifs Cézanne used in his paintings of Mont-Ste. Victoire and the countryside. He immersed himself in the study of Cézanne, even living in Cézanne’s studio temporarily. Returning to the United States in 1929, he settled in New York publishing and writing criticism in art magazines (“Cézanne’s Country” in The Arts in 1930) and showing his own artistic work. He contracted tuberculosis and returned to Minneapolis where he was employed in the Public Works of Art Project, a federal program that supported out-of-work artists during the Depression. His painting subject matter returned to that of regional Minnesota. Sometime in the mid-1930s, Johnson changed his name to Erle Loran. In 1936, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. The following year he married Clyta Sisson (1911-1982). Beginning in the 1940s, Loran collected Asian, pre-Columbian, American Indian and African tribal art. He served as chair of the Art Department in the early 1950s. As an artist, Loran became the leader of a group of painters known as the “Berkeley School.” His art work was collected by the Smithsonian Institution, Washgington, D. C., the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1943 Loran published his book Cézanne’s Composition, approaching the artist’s work from the approach of form and space almost exclusively. At a time when Post-Impressionist art still confused much of the American public, the book explained Cézanne analytically based upon the formalist construction of the work, with diagrams and arrows, describing the art in aesthetic terms. Loran’s book was an immediate success with teachers and students. It was adopted by many universities which only then were beginning to teach modern art. In 1954 Loran studied with Hans Hofmann, the painter and theoretician of modern art in New York. His painting students at Berkeley included Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis. Loran retired from the University in 1972. After his first wife died in 1982, he married Ruth Page Schorer (1913-2010). He suffered a stroke in Berkeley and died at age 93. An avid atheist, his funeral service was held at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and his body cremated. His papers are housed at the Archives of American Art.

Loran’s book on Cézanne represents the rigid formalism in which modern art was taught in the first half of the twentieth century. While the book was written in part for practicing artists to learn composition, it re-enforced the notion that modern art could be understood apart from politics or subject considerations. The pop artist Roy Lichtenstein was inspired by Loran’s diagrams of Cézanne paintings, which struck Lichtenstein as a “ludicrously mechanistic attempt to explain the appeal of [Cézanne’s] work.” The artist was sued by Loran for copyright infringement.

Selected Bibliography

[as Johson, Earl Loran] “Cézanne’s Country.” Arts, Beaux-Arts, Litterature, Spectacles 16 (April 1930): 520-551; [as Loran, Earl.] Cézanne’s Composition: Analysis of his Form, with Diagrams and Photographs of his Motifs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943.[collection:] African and Ancient Mexican Art: the Loran Collection exhibited at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1974.

Sources

Oral History Interview with Erle Loran, 1981 June 18. Chipp, Herschel Browning, interviewer. Archives of American Art, 1981 summary; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 104 mentioned; Erle Loran: Artist, Collector, and Scholar. San Francisco: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1994; McDonald, John. “Prints of Pop.” Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), May 25, 1996, [Arts section], p. 16; [obituaries:] Her, Lucy Y. “Erle Loran, whose Artwork Appears in Smithsonian, Other Museums, Dies at 93.” Star Tribune (Minneapolis) May 20, 1999, p. 9B; “Erle Loran.” San Francisco Chronicle. May 24, 1999, p. C4.

López-Rey, José

November 8, 2023July 26, 2024

Full Name: López-Rey, José

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): educators

Overview

New York University Institute of Fine Arts scholar; Velázquez and Goya scholar, part of the department assembled by Walter W. S. Cook at the Institute of Fine Arts. His students included Eleanor Tufts.

Selected Bibliography

Velázquez: A Catalogue Raisonné of His Oeuvre, with an Introductory Study. London: 1963; Velázquez’ Work and World. London: 1968; Velázquez: the Artist as a Maker with a Catalogue Raisonné of the Extant Works. Lausanne: Bibliothéque des Arts, 1979; Francisco de Goya. London: , 1951; A Cycle of Goya’s Drawings: the Expression of Truth and Liberty. London: Faber and Faber, 1956; Goya’s Caprichos: Beauty, Reason & Caricature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Sources

KMP, 48 mentioned; Bazin 444

Contributors: Denise Shkurovich, Doriz Concepcion, and Yuhuan Zhang

Loosjes-Terpstra, A. B.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Loosjes-Terpstra, A. B.

Other Names:

A. B. Loosjes-Terpstra

Gender: female

Date Born: 1913

Date Died: 1995

Place Born: Hilversum, North Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Stadtlohn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Overview

Modernist scholar. Terpstra’s parents, both historians, convinced their daughter to study law. After graduation, however, in 1932 she began studying art history at Utrecht University. Following her second graduation, she worked for a short time at the Hague Gemeentemuseum. She quit her position when she married, and she then moved to Eindhoven. She remained active as a high school teacher of art history. In Eindhoven she frequently visited the municipal van Abbemuseum, then directed by Eduard Leon Louis de Wilde, where the collection and exhibitions of international modern art were a source of inspiration, and aroused her particular interest in the Dutch pioneers of modern art in the early 1900s. In 1953 she chose this topic for her doctoral dissertation, and began her search in many museum depositories. She earned her doctor’s degree from Utrecht University under J. G. van Gelder in 1958. This dissertation became the first part of a much broader publication Moderne kunst in Nederland, 1900-1914 (Modern art in the Netherlands, 1900-1914), which appeared in 1959. It offers a critical stylistic analysis of new trends in painting in the first years of the 1900s that led to the so-called Amsterdam Luminism, which became prominent in the years 1909-1910, and in which the painters Piet Mondriaan, Jan Sluyters, and Leo Gestel played a central role. She also dealt with different manifestations of European modernisms that existed between 1911 and 1914. Her book, which is rich in descriptions of the stylistic features of the artworks, also provides an interesting chronicle of the art scene of those years. Terpstra wrote a new preface for the 1987 reprint. She then lived in Germany, where she died in 1995. As a high school teacher in art history, Terpstra focused rather on the emotional perception when viewing art works than on a pure intellectual approach. Writing after her death, Carel Blotkamp expressed regrets that the author of this important study on modern art had not the opportunity, in the 1950s, to become an academic in this field.

Selected Bibliography

“Nieuwe Beweging in de Nederlandse schilderkunst” (“New Trends in Dutch Painting”) Museumjournaal 1, no 8 and 9-10 (1956): 140-142, 167-173. (Inleiding, op 17 dec. 1955 uitgesproken bij de opening van de gelijknamige tentoonstelling in het Stedelijk van Abbemuseum te Eindhoven); Moderne kunst in Nederland, 1900-1914. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1959.

Sources

Blotkamp, Carel. “Kunstgeschiedenis en moderne kunst: een lange aanloop.” in Hecht, Peter, and Stolwijk, Chris, and Hoogenboom, Annemieke. Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998, p. 100; [obituary:] “Kunsthistorica Aleida Terpstra (81) overleden” NRC Handelsblad May 18, 1995 [section] Kunst: 6.

Loos-Haaxman, Jeanne de,

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Loos-Haaxman, Jeanne de,

Other Names:

Jeanne de Loos-Haaxman

Gender: female

Date Born: 03 November 1881

Date Died: 01 May 1976

Place Born: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): colonialism, colonization, Dutch (culture or style), Dutch East Indian, and Indian (South Asian)

Overview

Historian of the art of the [former] Dutch East Indies region. Jeanne Haaxman received her earliest art education from her father, Pieter Anne Haaxman, who was a journalist and art critic. Her mother was Janetta Maria Wijnkamp. After her graduation from high school, in 1899, she studied drawing and art history at the Academy in The Hague, where she earned her degree as secondary school teacher. In 1902 she was appointed an anatomical illustrator at the Anatomisch Laboratorium of Leiden University, where she in addition attended art history classes. In 1909 she married Wolter de Loos (1878-1950), who had studied law at Leiden University. In 1911 he assumed the position as a clerk in the Council of Justice in Padang, Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia). In 1921 the family moved to the town of Batavia (now Jakarta). This presented De Loos-Haaxman opportunities to use her skills as an art historian. Partly due to the prominent position of her husband, she became actively involved in local cultural institutions, such as the Bataviaas Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Association for the Arts and the Sciences of Batavia), founded in 1778, and the Bataviase Kunstkring (Art Circle of Batavia), founded in 1902. Among her first interests were the drawings and water colors of the French painter Ernest Hardouin who lived and worked in Batavia around 1841. In 1923 she wrote the catalog for an exhibition of Chinese art, organized by the Bataviase kunstkring. From 1924 onwards she oversaw the restoration of the portrait collection of the Dutch governors-general (gouverneur-generaal), which was in a very bad shape. At the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Bataviaas Genootschap in 1928, she co-authored an edition of the topographical drawings of Batavia and of places along the coast of Java by the Danish painter Johannes Rach (1720-1783). Between 1927 and 1932 De Loos-Haaxman taught art history and drawing at the newly opened lyceum in Batavia. In 1930 she eventually was appointed curator of the so-called “Landsverzameling Schilderijen”, which included the portraits of the Dutch governors. She published her ongoing research on the portraits in 13 articles in the periodical of the Bataviaas Genootschap, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. The same year, 1930, she became commissioner for the visual arts in the board of the Bataviase Kunstkring and in the board of the Bond van Indische Kunstkringen. Among the initiatives of the Bataviase kunstkring was the set up of an overview of privately-owned western art in Java. For this purpose De Loos-Haaxman did research in the lower city of Batavia, occasionally in collaboration with the Dutch author Maria Dermoût, born in Java in 1888. As a commissioner of the Bataviase Kunstkring De Loos-Haaxman was responsible for the organization of the exhibition program. In addition to the annual shows of contemporary foreign artists staying in the East Indies she organized several thematic exhibitions of Dutch art. In 1935 she was actively involved in the registration and exhibition of indigenous, European, and Dutch silverwork, including the silver of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). At her initiative additional exhibitions were made possible through the generous loans of the Dutch industrial and art collector P. A. Regnault (1868-1954), who owned several paint factories in the Dutch East Indies. Between 1935 and 1939 five shows were held in the so-called loan museum, created for this purpose in one of the rooms of the Bataviase kunstkring. On display were selections from Regnault’s collection, including paintings by Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Ensor, Zadkine, Sluyters, and many other avant-garde artists. These exhibitions were a source of inspiration for young Indonesian painters. In 1939, her huband retired and the family returned to The Netherlands. Settling in Leiden, De Loos-Haaxman published her two-volume study on the “Landsverzameling Schilderijen”, De Landsverzameling Schilderijen in Batavia, Landvoogdsportretten en Compagnieschilders in 1941. Her widowed daughter Jeanne (1910-1973), also an art historian, was interned in a Japanese camp during World War II in the Dutch East Indies. She returned to the Netherlands were she and her mother shared an interest in the cultural history of the Dutch East Indies. In 1968 De Loos-Haaxman published her delayed report, as she called it, on western artists in the Dutch East Indies during three centuries, Verlaat rapport Indië. Drie eeuwen Westerse schilders, tekenaars, grafici, zilversmeden en kunstnijveren in Nederlands-Indië. In 1972 she wrote the introduction to the catalog of the exhibition of Dutch Eas Indies artists, held in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, organized by her daughter. De Loos-Haaxman published her memoirs the same year in a somehwhat bitter title, Dagwerk in Indië. Hommage aan een verstild verleden (Time in the Indies: homage to a silenced past). She died at age ninety-five. Her early manuscript on the painter Hardouin was published posthumously in 1982, De Franse schilder Ernest Hardouin in Batavia. Verlaat rapport Indië was praised in a 1969 lecture of the Vereniging van Nederlandse Kunsthistorici (Association of Dutch Art Historians) by its chair, Henri Van de Waal.

Selected Bibliography

[biblilography:] De Loos, W. “Voornaamste geschriften” in Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde te Leiden 1975-1976. 1977, pp. 165-167; Marcus-de Groot, Yvette. Kunsthistorische vrouwen van weleer. Hilversum: Uitg. Verloren, 2003 p. 428-431; and Bloys van Treslong Prins, P. C. Johannes Rach en zijn werk. Jubileum-uitgave van het Koninklijk Bataviaasch genootschap van kunsten en wetenschappen 1778-24 april-1928. Batavia: G. Kolff & co, 1928; De Landsverzameling Schilderijen in Batavia, Landvoogdsportretten en Compagnieschilders. 2 vols. Leiden: Sijthoff, 1941; Verlaat rapport Indië. Drie eeuwen Westerse schilders, tekenaars, grafici, zilversmeden en kunstnijveren in Nederlands-Indië. The Hague: Mouton & Co, 1968; Dagwerk in Indië. Hommage aan een verstild verleden. Franeker: T. Wever, 1972; and Terwen-de Loos, Jeanne. Nederlandse schilders en tekenaars in de Oost. Exh. catalog Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, 1972; [posthumously published:] De Franse schilder Ernest Hardouin in Batavia. Leiden: Brill, 1982.

Sources

Van de Waal, Hans. Nieuwsbulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 2 (1969): 15-21; Versprille, Annie. “Jeanne Maria Cornelia de Loos-Haaxman” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde te Leiden 1975-1976 1977, pp.159-167; Marcus-de Groot, Yvette. Kunsthistorische vrouwen van weleer. De eerste generatie in Nederland vóór 1921. Hilversum: Verloren, 2003, pp. 356-385; Jaffé, Hans L. C. “P. A. Regnault en zijn collectie” in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1981 32 (1982): 279-294; [obituaries:] “Mevrouw De Loos-Haaxman overleden” NRC-Handelsblad (May 4, 1976); De Volkskrant (May 4, 1976).

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Longhurst, Margaret

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Longhurst, Margaret

Other Names:

Margaret Longhurst

Gender: female

Date Born: 1882

Date Died: 1958

Place Born: Chertsey, Surrey, England, UK

Place Died: Aldbourne, Wiltshire, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Medievalist; first woman to curator of a major British museum; Keeper the Department of Architecture and Sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1938-1942. Longhurst’s early life is uncertain due to her extreme private nature. She was likely the daughter of Henry Longhurst (1824-1895), a successful thought modest draper, and Caroline Louisa Taylor (Longhurst). She was educated privately (according to herself) but never, apparently, formally. Longhurst used her inheritance left to her by her father to travel in Europe, privately experiencing and studying art, particularly medieval sculpture. She published articles as a private scholar in the Burlington Magazine. Longhurst volunteered at the Victoria & Albert Museum after the First World War, then moving to a temporary cataloger position in 1924, the year Eric Maclagan ascended to the directorship. She was made a museum assistant in 1926, because of her knowledge of early sculpture. The same year she published English Ivories and Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory. part 1, 1927, and part 2, 1929 of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Longhurst was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1929. She rose to assistant keeper (second class) in 1930. Her paper on the recently-acquired Easby cross was published in Archaeologia in 1931. She completed the Museum’s Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in 1932 begun earlier by Maclagan. She was promoted to assistant first class in 1934 and in 1938 keeper (second class) of the department of architecture and sculpture, the first woman in Britain to attain the post of keeper in a national museum (Bilbey). She retired in 1942, continuing to travel. She died at home, Wayside, Castle Street, Aldbourne, near Marlborough, Wiltshire in 1958. Longhurst never married; her estate was directed by her colleague, Hender Delves Molesworth, who succeeded her in 1945. Her unpublished, which she hoped would be published, were edited in 1963, but never published. They remain at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the University of London, Warburg Institute. Maclagan and Longhurst’s Italian sculpture catalog was superseded in 1964 by that of John Pope-Hennessy. United Kingdom

Selected Bibliography

“A Fragment of Early Italian Figure Sculpture.” Burlington Magazine 37, no. 209 (August 1920): 77-79; English Ivories. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926; Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory [in the Victoria and Albert Museum]. vol. 1. Up to the Thirteenth Century, vol. 2. From the Thirteenth Century to the Present Day. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1927; and Maclagan, Eric. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture. London: Dept. of Architecture and Sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1932; [unpublished notes] Notes on Italian Monuments of the 12th to 16th Centuries.

Sources

Williamson, Paul. “Longhurst, Margaret (Helen).” Dictionary of Art 19: 638; Bilbey, Diane. “Longhurst, Margaret Helen (1882-1958).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; [obituary:] “Miss M. H. Longhurst.” Times (London), January 28, 1958, p. 10.

Longhi, Roberto

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Longhi, Roberto

Other Names:

Roberto Longhi

Gender: male

Date Born: 1890

Date Died: 1970

Place Born: Alba, Cuneo, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): Early Renaissance, painting (visual works), and Renaissance

Career(s): art critics

Overview

Art historian, critic and magazine founder; Piero della Francesca scholar. Longhi’s parents were originally from Emilia. Longhi wrote his dissertation on Caravaggio under Pietro Toesca in Turin, 1911. He supported himself by teaching art history in the licei (high schools) of Rome while attending the School of Advanced Studies (in Rome) under Adolfo Venturi. Venturi, impressed with Longhi’s intellect, assigned him the book reviews section of Venturi’s magazine, L’Arte, in 1914. He also contributed to L’Arte and La Voce between 1913-1920. Longhi’s two life-long art subjects were Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca. Piero was still a relatively obscure artist when Longhi published a 1914 article on him, “Piero dei Franceschi e lo sviluppo della pittura veneziana,” (Piero Francesca and the Development of Venetian Painting). The publisher Mario Broglio (1891-1948), who founded the journal Valori Plastici in 1918, asked Longhi to write a full-length monograph on the artist. Although a Renaissance historian, Longhi also took a keen interest in modern art, championing the Futurists and especially Umberto Baccioni but disparaging the Pittura Metafisica movement. Around the 1920, he became part of the circle of the collector and art dealer Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878-1955), who funded Longhi’s travels and helped launch his career as a connoisseur. In 1924 he married the writer Lucia Lopresti (1895 -1985), who wrote under the pen name “Anna Banti.” In 1927 Broglio brought out Longhi’s masterwork, Piero della Francesca, establishing Piero as one of the great Quattrocento artists. This was in contrast to the opinion of Bernard Berenson whose 1897 Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance considered Piero “unemotional” and “impassive.” Longhi began writing for other magazines during this time, including Pinacotheca (1927-1929) and, as co-editor with Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, in Critica d’arte. Another of Longhi’s fascinations was Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti. His “Quesiti caravaggeschi,” a series of articles, were published between 1928-1934. Longhi’s advocacy of connoisseurship put him at odds with Lionello Venturi, Adolfo’s son and also an art historian, and the two participated in a celebrated debate, most clearly elaborated in his 1934 book on the painting of Ferrara, Officina ferrarese. The same year, 1934, Longhi was appointed to the chair of art history at the University of Bologna. He acquired the Florentine villa, “Il Tasso,” in 1939 which became his home. During the height of World War II, Longhi issued a second edition of his Piero book, 1942, and founded the journal Proporzioni in 1943, the latter offering revisionist interpretations to Tuscan art and particularly Giotto’s painting. A second series of articles on Caravaggio appeared as the Ultimi studi caravaggeschi also in 1943. After the war, Longhi was appointed to the chair of art history at the university in Florence in 1949. His wide interest in all the arts led to his launching another journal, Paragone, in 1950, which alternated issues between art and literature. Longhi wrote the introduction to the catalog of the important Caravaggio exhibition of Milan in 1951. A third edition of the Piero book appeared in 1962 and a full-length monograph on Caravaggio (criticized for its lack of footnotes) was published in 1968. Longhi died at his villa in 1970. The Fondazione Roberto Longhi was founded the following year to encourage art-historical scholarship. Longhi’s students included the art historian Giovanni Previtali and Luciano Bellosi. Outside the field of art history, the poet Attilio Bertolucci (1911-2000) and the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) also studied under him.

Longhi remained an influential teacher. His students included detractors as well as admirers. Though he admired Longhi’s writing style, Federico Zeri, the controversial historian of art, in later years accused Longhi of authenticating fakes to pay gambling debts. Other students remained more generous. Longhi was philosophically influenced by the esthetics of Benedetto Croce. He added as early as 1912 a more humane, if slightly romantic counter to the positivism of Giovanni Morelli, insisting his connoisseurship was merely “intuition.” Longhi’s methodology was highly formalist and connoisseurship-based, striving to find verbal equivalents for his perceptions of works of art and notions of “pure painting” (Agosti). He was more of an advocate of connoisseurship than of a history of art. Charles Hope characterized Longhi as “a brilliantly eloquent critic and connoisseur, mainly preoccupied with the intense scrutiny of individual works of art,” adding that Longhi lacked the inclination to investigate social and historical circumstances in which art was produced. Longhi was not insensitive to the criteria, however; the patronage art historian Francis Haskell remarked that what he admired most about Longhi was “his ability to make historical connections.”

Selected Bibliography

[complete works:] Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi. 14 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1956-1991; Piero della Francesca. Rome: “Valori plastici”, 1927, English, Piero della Francesca. New York: F. Warne & Co., 1930, [retranslation:] Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Stanley Moss Book-Sheep Meadow Press, 2000; Officina ferrarese. Rome: Le Edizioni d’Italia, 1934; ; Carlo Braccesco. Milan: s.n., 1942; Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana. Florence: Sansoni, 1946; Mostra del Caravaggio e dei caravaggeschi Catalogo [Milan, Italy]. Florence: Sansoni, 1951; and Ghidiglia Quintavalle, Augusta. Correggio: the Frescoes in San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. New York: H. N. Abrams,1964; Me pinxit e quesiti caravaggeschi, 1928-1934. Florence: Sansoni, 1968.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 3, 6; Previtali, Giovanni. L’Arte di scrivere sull’arte: Roberto Longhi nella cultura del nostro tempo. Rome: Editori riuniti, 1982; Gregori, M. “Roberto Longhi as Collector.” Apollo 113 (May 1981): 306-10; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 243-244; Agosti, Giacomo. “Longhi, Roberto.” The Dictionary of Art 19: 637-8; Tabbat, David. “Introduction: The Eloquent Eye: Roberto Longhi and the Historical Criticism of Art.” Roberto Longhi: Three Studies. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Stanley Moss-Sheep Meadow Book, 1996, pp. ix-xxxiii; Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p.10; Federico Zeri. The Daily Telegraph (London), November 2, 1998, p. 21; Romano, Giovanni. Storie dell’arte: Toesca, Longhi, Wittkower, Previtali. Rome: Donzelli, 1998; Nordhagen, Per Jonas, “Roberto Longhi,” Konsthistorisk-Tidskrift LXVIII 1999 Hafte 2: 99-116, “On Francis Haskell” New York Review of Books 47, no. 3 (February 24, 2000): 7 (Charles Hope on Haskell’s remark of Longhi). [Zeri’s derision of Longhi]; Christiansen, Keith. “Roberto Longhi’s Piero della Francesca,” and Tabbat, David. “Piero, Longhi, and the Fields of Color.” Longhi, Roberto. Piero della Francesca. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Stanley Moss Book-Sheep Meadow Press, 2000, pp. i-v, vii-xxvii; [Obituaries:] Bloch, Vitale. “Roberto Longhi.” Burlington Magazine 113 (October 1971): 609-612.

Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1538

Date Died: c. 1600

Place Born: Sorano, Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre)

Overview

Biographer of artists (1590); painter and art theorist. Lomazzo was raised in a family of moderate social status. He trained under the painter Gaudenzio Ferrari (1470-1546). During this time he came into contact with the famous doctor and autobiographer Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) and the heir to and owner of Leonardo’s notebooks, Francesco Melzi. After becoming an independent master, he received a steady stream of commissions for murals and altarpieces, many the auspices of Giuliano Goselini (1525-1587), a secretary to successive dukes of Milan. Lomazzo made a tour in 1562 to various countries, studying art. In 1568 he became “Prince” (‘Abbot’ or ‘Nabad’) of the Accademia della Balle del Blenio. By 1571, however, Lomazzo had become completely blind and he turned to art writing. His most important work for scholars today, Trattato della pittura, was published in 1584. An autobiography, Rime, appeared in1589. The following year, 1590, Idea del tempio della pittura was issued. This book, organized around the concept of a temple whose architectural components signify the seven parts of painting, included artists’ biographies. Thus Lomazzo emerged as a proto-historian of art. His other writing remained in manuscript. His most famous pupil, Figino, was the subject of a 1592 dialogue-style work by Canon Antonio Comanini (d. 1608).Lomazzo is studied by art historians today for his metaphysical theories of artistic creation. His discussions rival in complexity of those from any period. His Trattato, a seven-book (or part) neo-Platonic work shows the influence by the thinking of Marcello Ficino. A conspicuous figure in artistic and intellectual circles in northern Italy, Lomazzo’s contemporary reputation was as much as a painter as theorist, reaching beyond his native Milan. His treatises were not reprinted for several hundred years, though translations, such an English one by Richard Haydocke of parts of the Trattato was published in 1598; a French translation in 1649. In the 20th century, the art historians Erwin Panofsky, Gerald M. Ackerman, Robert Klein and Roberto Ciardi brought his writings back to light and works to a new audience.

Selected Bibliography

Trattato dell’arte de la pittura. Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584, English, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge & Buildinge. Translated by Richard Haydocke. Oxford: Printed by I. Barnes, 1598; Rime . . . divise in sette libri, nelle quali ad imitatione de’ grotteschi usati da’ pittori, ha cantato le lodi di Dio . . . con la vita dell’autore. Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1587; Idea del tempio della pittura. Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1590; Della forma delle muse cavate dagli antichi autori greci e latini: Opera utilissima a’ pittori e scultori. Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1591.

Sources

Lomazzo, Giovanni. Rime divise in sette libri, nelle quali ad imitatione de’ grotteschi usati da’ pittori, ha cantato le lodi di Dio con la vita dell’autore. Milan, 1587; Ackerman, Gerald M. The Structure of Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1964; KGK, 47-8; Kemp, Martin. “Giovanni Lomazzo.” Dictionary of Art; Webb, Nick. “Giovan Paolo Lomazzo and Federico Zuccaro.” in Key Writers on Art. Chris Murray, ed. London/New York: Routledge, 2003, vol. 1, pp. 82-89.

Lohse, Bruno

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lohse, Bruno

Gender: male

Date Born: 1912

Date Died: 2007

Home Country/ies: Germany

Career(s): art dealers

Overview

Art historian and art dealer. After earning his Ph.D., he began working in Paris in 1941 for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi agency set up to loot art from victims of the Reich. He was Hermann Göring’s personal contact and organized exhibitions of looted art in the Jeu de Paume museum. Lohse mounted ten separate exhibitions (as he termed them) of confiscated art for Göring to examine and choose from. This amounted to 422 works by later 1942. At the conclusion of World War II, he was sentenced and served three years in prison between 1948 and 1951. After his release, Lohse worked as an art consultant in Munich. Upon his death in 2007, a painting was discovered in his safe in Zürich which had been sought for decades by the heirs of a Jewish collector.

Sources

“Raub und Resitution” Jüdisches Museum Berlin (exhibition webpage) http://www.jmberlin.de/raub-und-restitution/en/home.php; Petropoulous, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargan: The Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 201; Yeide, Nancy. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection. Dallas, TX: Laurel Publishing, 2009, p. 14.

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