Art Historians

Le Roy, Julien-David

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Le Roy, Julien-David

Other Names:

Julien-David Leroy

Gender: male

Date Born: 1724

Date Died: 1803

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

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), Classical, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

French architect who published the first measured designs of the Acropolis in 1758. Le Roy was the son of the famous clockmaker to Louis XV, Julien Le Roy (1686-1759). He studied architecture at the école des arts under Jacques-François Blondel (“le petit Blondel”) (1705-1774) and later under Philippe de La Guêpière (1715-1773) and Jean-Laurent Legeay (1710-1786). He traveled to Rome in 1751 as a Prix de Rome recipient where, in 1754, he obtained permission to visit Ottoman-controlled Greece intent on measuring the architecture for a publication. A British team also engaged in measuring and drawing Greek architecture had only left a few weeks before, that of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett (1720-1804). Le Roy first went on Delos, then to Athens where he spent several months, and finally Corinth and Sparta, before returning to Paris in 1755. While Stuart dallied publishing his findings in England, Le Roy, aided by the Anne Claude Philippe Caylus, hired a team of engravers to bring the work to completion. In 1758, Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce appeared, much to the ire of Stuart. Whereas Stuart’s work was projected for four volumes, Le Roy’s smaller book was divided into two, one describing the historical background (and his own travels) in Greece, and the other summarizing his theories on Greek architecture. Based on the monuments Le Roy had measured, he concluded that Vitruvius’ wrtings were not always correct and that the Romans had often ignored him in their building. His assertion that Greek art, contrary to the contemporary view, does not embody a universal ideal but rather followed historic and idiosyncratic practice, predated the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann by ten years. The illustrations, engraved by the best of the time, including Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain, Pierre-Charles Le Mettay, Claude-Antoine Littret de Montigny, Jacques Philippe Le Bas, Pierre Patte and Jean-François de Neufforge, made a strong public impact. Les Ruines greatly influenced the architects of the day, particularly Jacques-Denis Antoine, Jean-Arnaud Raymond, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, and François-Joseph Bélanger. Le Roy became a member of the Académie Royale d’Architecture and was appointed assistant to its professor, Blondel. Stuart and Revett’s own book, volume one of Antiquities of Athens, finally appeared in 1762. In it, Stuart attacked the inaccuracies in Le Roy’s work and Le Roy published a pamphlet in 1764 countering Stuart’s criticism. A second edition of the Les Ruines appeared in 1770. Le Roy now focused on the practice of architecture, submitting designs for the rebuilding of the municipal hospital (the Hôtel Dieu), Paris, after 1772. He succeeded Blondel as professor at the Académie in 1774. Other architectural work followed including the park at the château of Chantilly and the 1780 design finishing Ange-Jacques Gabriel’s buildings at Versailles (never executed). Following the events of the French Revolution, which prevented his Hôtel Dieu designs from fruition, he became a member of the commission supervising the new Musée d’Arts (today the Musée du Louvre), beginning in 1789. When Académie was abolished in 1793, Le Roy continued to teach. He helped found the école Spéciale d’Architecture in 1795 and the Institut de France. The historical importance of Le Roy’s book in relation to Stuart and Revett’s continues to be debated by scholars. Stuart and Revett had spent more time in Greece and their book depicted more accurate measurements. However, Le Roy, like his British competitors, spread a better understanding of Greek architecture, especially of the Doric order. His book in particular carefully documented the Ionic order, which was known but much different in Eighteen-century architectural practice than the original.

Selected Bibliography

Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece: ouvrage divisé en deux parties, où l’on considere, dans la premiere, ces monuments du côté de l’histoire et dans la seconde, du côté de l’architecture. 2 vols. Paris: H. L. Guerin & L. F. Delatour, 1758, English, The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004.

Sources

Middleton, Robin. “Introduction.” The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004, pp. 1-199; Bergdoll, Barry. Leon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry. New York: Architectural Press, 1994, pp. 12-18; Wiebenson, Dora. Sources of Greek Revival Architecture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969.

Le Brun, J.- P.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Le Brun, J.- P.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1851

Date Died: 1924

Overview

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 397

Lazarev, Viktor Mikitich

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lazarev, Viktor Mikitich

Gender: male

Date Born: 1896

Date Died: 1976

Home Country/ies: Russia

Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), iconography, and Medieval (European)

Overview

Byzantine iconography; student of Dmitrii Vlas’evich Ainalov III

Sources

KRG, 61 mentioned

Byzantine iconography; student of Dmitrii Vlas’evich Ainalov III

Layard, Austen Henry, Sir

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Layard, Austen Henry, Sir

Other Names:

Henry Austen Layard

Gender: male

Date Born: 1817

Date Died: 1894

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

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): archaeology, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance

Overview

Archaeologist, adventurer and amateur scholar of Italian renaissance art; discoverer of Nineveh. Layard was the son of Henry Peter John Layard, a civil servant, and Marianne Austen (Layard). He grew up in Florence near the Palazzo Rucellai, instilling in him a lifelong affection in Italy. He knew the British expatriate esthete Seymour Stocker Kirkup (1788-1880) and poet Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864). At 12, Laynard returned to England and was apprenticed as a solicitor under his uncle in 1833. While heading to Ceylon to assist another uncle’s business in 1839, he detoured to see the archaeological sites Asia Minor, copying cuneiform inscriptions. He elected to stay in Iraq where he learned Arabic. In 1842 he worked on diplomatic missions for Sir Stratford Canning (1786-1880) in Constantinople. By 1845 Layard convinced Canning to support excavating a mound at Mosul (Nimrud, ancient Kalhu)–ahead of the French–then thought to be Nineveh. His excavations included 9th century BC sculptures, the so-called Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III and several pairs of human-headed winged lions and bulls (British Museum). In 1849 Layard published Monuments of Nineveh still believing he had discovered the famous city. It was only while excavating the citadel mound at Kuyunjik that he realized it was the true Nineveh. There his spectacular discoveries included Sennacherib’s palace and its rich relief cycles. The same year he published his popularized account of his findings, Nineveh and its Remains. In 1852 Layard, ever the 19th-century, romantic man of action was elected to Parliament for the Liberal party. His denunciation of the British handling of the Crimean War and British imperialism in general eventually alienated him from government. During his many trips to Italy, which was his homeland in many ways, he became interested in the Risorgimento (reorganization of Italy into the modern secular state) and concerned at the decline of the frescos there. In 1856 he enlisted the Arundel Society (founded in 1848 to disseminate art reproductions) to produce a chromolithography edition of the St. Sebastian by Perugino to publicize the fresco’s plight. Layard also published short books on Pinturicchio and Ghirlandaio to assist the project as well as collecting Italian art personally. In 1853 his second book on his archaeological finds, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, appeared. At the new founding of the Crystal Palace in 1854, Layard advised the Assyrian court design and objects. This resulted in the Assyrian-mania design of the following decades. He began corresponding with the connoisseur-art historian Giovanni Morelli in 1863 and taking an ever-increasing role in the governing of the National Gallery. When the director, Charles Lock Eastlake died 1865, Layard was considered a possible successor. He instead became a Trustee in 1866, actively advising the museum on acquisitions. As commissioner of works in Gladstone’s cabinet, he appointed the historian of Indian architecture James Fergusson in 1869 to create a new plan of London public buildings. This was scuttled and Layard, much against protocol, was offered the Ambassador position for Madrid. This allowed Layard to include Spanish art work in his acquisitions as well. That year, too, he married Mary Enid Evelyn Guest (1843-1912), a well-connected woman with whom he had had a relationship since the 1840s. In 1877 Disraeli appointed Layard ambassador to Constantinople. The Layards returned Italy after Austen Henry’s (always known as “Henry”) retirement in 1883, settling in Venice at the Ca’ Cappello, later known as the Palazzo Cappello-Layard. After the death of his friend, Morelli, in 1891, he financed the second and more comprehensive English edition, co-edited by Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes of Morelli’s Italian Painters, writing a brief biography of Morelli. In 1887 he issued a revised version in English of the 1837 Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei by Franz Kugler. A revision of the painting galleries section of the original 1843 Murray guidebook of Rome appeared in 1894. Layard returned to London, now suffering from cancer, where he died, his body cremated. His papers are held at the British Library and his collection bequeathed to the National Gallery, London, although only incorporated 1916. His Venetian palazzo is today the Istituto Orientale, Università degli Studi. Layard’s work was important for the discovery of Assyrian objects and the dissemination of the important art-historical writings of Morelli (and connoisseurship) and Kugler to the English-speaking world. His correspondence reveals much about the early history of the National Gallery and the history of conservation of object. His home in Venice became a visiting point for British and an important private art collection.

Selected Bibliography

The Monuments of Nineveh: From Drawings Made on the Spot. London: J. Murray, 1849; Nineveh and its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1849; Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. London: J. Murray, 1853; The Nineveh Court in the Crystal Palace. London: Crystal Palace/Bradbury & Evans, 1854; The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian Painted in Fresco by Pietro Perugino in the Chapel of the Saint at Panicale. London: Arundel Society, 1856; The Frescoes by Bernardino Pinturicchio, in the Collegiate Church of S. Maria Maggiore at Spello. London: Arundel Society, 1858; Domenico Ghirlandaio and his Fresco of the Death of S. Francis. London: Arundel Society, 1860; Handbook of Painting: The Italian Schools, Based on the Handbook of Kugler, Originally Edited by Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A. Fifth Edition. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1887; and Ffoulkes, Constance Jocelyn. [edited and wrote] “Introduction.” Morelli, Giovanni. Italian Painters: Critical Studies of their Works. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1892-1893; revised section on “Painting Galleries” section in Lanciani, Rodolfo, and Murray, Alexander Stuart, and Pullen, Henry William. A Handbook of Rome and its Environs. 15th ed. London: J. Murray, 1894; The Frescoes by Bern: Pinturicchio, in the collegiate church of S. Maria Maggiore, at Spello. London: Arundel Society, 1858; The Brancacci Chapel and Masolino, Masaccio, and Filippino Lippi. London: Arundel Society, 1868.

Sources

Venturi, Adolfo. “La Formazione della Galleria Layard a Venezia.” L’Arte 15 (1912): 449-62; Waterfield, Gordon. Layard of Nineveh. New York: F. A. Praeger; Anderson, Jaynie. “Layard, Austin Henry.” Dictionary of Art; Fleming, John. “Art Dealing and the Risorgimento.” Burlington Magazine 115 (1973): 4-16; 121 (1979): 492-508, 568-80; Layard, Austin. Sir A. Henry Layard, G.C.B., D.C.L.: Autobiography and Letters from his Childhood until his Appointment as H. M. Ambassador at Madrid. London: J. Murray, 1903; Parry, Jonathan. “Layard, Austen Henry.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Lawrence, Marion

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lawrence, Marion

Gender: female

Date Born: 1901

Date Died: 1978

Place Born: Longport, Atlantic, NJ, USA

Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Early Christian, funerary arts, and sarcophagi (coffins)

Career(s): educators

Overview

Scholar of early Christian sarcophagi; Chair of the Art Department at Barnard College. Lawrence graduated from Byrn Mawr College in art history in 1923. She continued on to graduate school at Harvard, where she worked under the Princeton scholar Charles Rufus Morey who was on exchange for that year. It was Morey who introduced her to early Christian art. In 1924-25 she was appointed assistant at Wellesley. She was awarded a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome for the 1925-27 period. Two long articles in the Art Bulletin, one on the City-gate sarcophagi and another on columnar sarcophagi date from this time. She was an instructor at Bryn Mawr, 1927-28. In 1929 she moved to Barnard College, where she made her career. She continued to pursue her doctorate, which she received her Ph.D. in 1932 from Radcliffe in art history, although her connections with the Princeton scholars during these years really indicated a dual allegiance. She remained closed to Morey throughout their lives. At Barnard she rose to (full) professor and chair of the department. In 1941-42 she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, working on Ravennate sarcophagi, which appeared as her 1945 book with the same title. The book was only the second monograph in the Archaeology and Fine Arts series to be sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America. Later articles appeared in a number of festschriften, including those devoted to Belle da Costa Greene in 1954, Erwin Panofsky in 1961 and Rudolf Wittkower in 1967. In 1967 she retired from Barnard. In retirement she divided her time between Rome, New York and Little Deer Island, ME. In 1970 Bretschneider reprinted her 1945 Sarcophagi of Ravenna. Her final essay was that to the festschrift to Otto J. Brendel in 1976. While lecturing to a group of scholars on her current topic of interest, Roman pagan sarcophagi, she fell in Velletri, Italy, breaking her hip and elbow. She died ten days later in a Roman hospital.

Selected Bibliography

“City-Gate Sarcophagi.” Art Bulletin 10 (September 1927): 1-45; “Columnar Sarcophagi in the Latin West.” Art Bulletin 14 (June 1932): 103-85; The Sarcophagi of Ravenna. [2nd Monograph on Archaeology and Fine Arts sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America.] New York: College Art Association, 1945; “The Velletri Sarcophagus.” American Journal of Archaeology 69, No. 3. (July 1965): 207-222; “Season Sarcophagi of Architectural Type” American Journal of Archaeology 62, No. 3. (July 1958): 273-295; “The Importance of College Art Courses in the Present Emergency.” College Art Journal 2, No. 4, Part 1. (May 1943): 102-103.

Sources

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. 63, mentioned; [obituary:] Heuser, Mary. “Marion Lawrence.” American Journal of Archaeology 82, No. 4. (Autumn, 1978): 575.

Lawrence, Arnold Walter

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lawrence, Arnold Walter

Other Names:

"Lawrence"

Gender: male

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1991

Place Born: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK

Place Died: Devizes, Wiltshire, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), Classical, Greek sculpture styles, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Historian of ancient Greek sculpture and architecture and the history of fortifications. Lawrence’s older brother was the medieval scholar and popular desert hero T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) (1888-1935), under whose shadow the younger Lawrence remained. Like his brothers, A. W. Lawrence was conceived out of wedlock, a huge stigma at the time. Their parents were Sir Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman (1846-1919) and Sarah Junner (1861-1959) who assumed the names “Thomas Robert Lawrence” and “Sarah Lawrence” to raise their children jointly. The Lawrence boys were raised in Oxford by the intensely religious Sarah, resulting in Lawrence’s outspoken anti-religious stance (“All religion is vermin” he once said). He attended the City of Oxford School before New College, Oxford, graduating in 1921 with a diploma of Classical Archaeology. Lawrence was a student at the British Schools at Rome in 1921 and then at Athens (through 1926). In 1923 Lawrence worked on the excavation of Ur (where he discovered he did not want to be an excavator), directed by C. Leonard Woolley (1880-1960), and under whom T. E. Lawrence had excavated at Carchemish before World War I. Lawrence married Barbara Inness Thompson (1902-1986) in 1925. A chance visit to the museum in Alexandria on his return trip to England convinced him that the city could not have been (as was commonly stated) the leading center of Hellenistic sculpture. Lawrence used his fellowship as the Oxford Craven student to write the 1927 book Later Greek Sculpture and its Influence, setting out this thesis in a bold fashion. This early revisionist work did not gain immediate acceptance. In 1929 he published a second work on Greek plastic arts, Classical Sculpture, which became a standard survey for the next generation, though Lawrence lacked sympathy for the Archaic style. Nevertheless, the book led to his appointment as Laurence Reader in Classical Archaeology in Cambridge University in 1930. His wide-ranging scholarly interests resulted in the 1931 Narratives of the Discovery of America. In the 1930s when part of the Avebury megaliths site was threatened by development, Lawrence used his personal funds to buy the land in order to preserve it. Lawrence caused a minor scandal in 1934 by having a “sun-worshipper style” bronze nude statue of himself, sculpted by Lady Kathleen Scott, placed at the entrance to the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, near a larger statue of the Virgin Mary outside a nearby Catholic church. After his brother’s death on a motorcycle in 1935, Lawrence became the literary executor; this took considerable time from his scholarly production. It also stimulated an interest in fortifications of which T. E. had been a specialist; for the rest of A. W.’s life, he would research ancient fortifications. In 1936 Lawrence’s first revision of Rawlinson’s Herodotus translation appeared with notes by Lawrence. In 1937 he edited a book on his brother, T. E. Lawrence by His Friends. During World War II, Lawrence served in a variety of capacities, though none which he found satisfying to the war effort. He was elected to the Laurence Chair of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge in 1944 (succeeding Alan J. B. Wace, 1879-1957). He was awarded a Leverhulme research fellowship in 1951 to study ancient and medieval fortifications in classical lands. Somewhat surprisingly, Lawrence resigned his Cambridge chair the same year to become the first professor of archaeology at the University College of the Gold Coast (modern University of Ghana). He was appointed Secretary and Conservator Monuments and Relics Commission of Ghana in 1952. At the university, Lawrence founded the museum (and became its first director), organized the classics department and restored local fortresses. He donated a bust by his friend, Jacob Epstein, to the National Museum of Ghana. Lawrence had not escaped British attention, however. While in Ghana, He was asked by Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner to write the volume in the prestigious Pelican History of Art series on Greek architecture. It appeared in 1957. In it, Lawrence departed from the traditional encyclopedic survey format, preferring instead to stress the continuity Aegean architecture as a series of developing styles, beginning with prehistoric architecture. A passage relating religious attitudes toward architectural function of the Greeks, was actually written, Lawrence said, to describe the mentality in the West African bush (!). He retired in 1957 to Nidderdale, Yorkshire, UK, and where he wrote Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa,1963. The same year he and his wife moved near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. Lawrence returned to the British School at Athens as visiting fellow in 1967. In 1972 he published another book on classical sculpture, Greek and Roman Sculpture. At age 80, Greek Aims In Fortification a book for which he was uniquely qualified, appeared in 1980. His A Skeletal History Of Byzantine Fortifications, despite its title a large work, was published by the British School at Athens in 1983. Lawrence’s published scholarship on fortifications in the classical era thus spanned from prehistoric systems of the Aegean to the medieval crusader castles of the Levant. In 1985 Lawrence was interviewed for a BBC Omnibus production by Julia Cave and Malcolm Brown about T. E. After the death of his wife, Lawrence’s final years were shared with Peggy Guido (1912-1994), an archaeologist previously married to the archaeologist Stuart Piggott (1910-1996), living together in Devizes, north Wiltshire. Lawrence was completing a new revision of his earlier annotated edition of Rawlinson’s Herodotus when he died in 1991. The manuscript was never completed.Both Lawrences, T. E. and A. W. were architectural historians (T. E. wrote a monograph on crusader castles). Like his famous brother, Lawrence was a shy man–resulting in what students called his appallingly bad lecture style–who had spent much of his life avoiding publicity. Described as one of the last great traditional archaeologists, A. W. Lawrence’s interest was more in art and architecture, than excavation or reconstruction of the ancient environment. Brown described him as “the sort [who] do not even suffer wise men gladly.” Lawrence spent much of his non-academic life renouncing various characterizations of his more famous brother. These included Richard Aldington’s sensationalized disclosure of their illegitimacy in 1955, the 1962 David Lean film Lawrence of Arabia (Lawrence withdrew his support and refused the movie the use of the title Seven Pillars of Wisdom because of what he termed character distortions of not only his brother but also of Allenby), and the Times (London) 1968 revelation of T. E.’s masochism.

Selected Bibliography

Greek Architecture. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1957; Classical Sculpture. London, J. Cape [1929; Greek Aims in Fortification. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979; Later Greek Sculpture and its Influence on East and West. London: J. Cape, 1927; edited, T. E. Lawrence, by his Friends. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1937; Trade Castles & Forts of West Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964 (copyright 1963); Greek and Roman Sculpture. London: Cape, 1972; T. E. Lawrence. BBC Omnibus film (production), 1986.

Sources

Cave, Julia. “Brotherly Reminders and Avebury Saved: Appreciations of A. W. Lawrence.” The Guardian (London), April 8, 1991; [obituaries:] Tomlinson, Richard. “Unlocking Doors to Fortresses of the Ancient World: Obituary of Professor A W Lawrence.” The Guardian (London), April 5, 1991; Cook, R. M. “Professor A. W. Lawrence.” The Independent (London), April 4, 1991, p. 29; Brown, Malcolm. “Obituary: Professor A. W. Lawrence.” The Independent (London), April 4, 1991, p. 29; personal correspondence, Michiel Hegener, January 2008.

Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg

Other Names:

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin

Gender: female

Date Born: 1925

Place Born: St. Louis, Saint Louis City, MO, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, painting (visual works), and Renaissance

Overview

Piero Della Francesca and quattrocento art scholar. Aronberg was the daughter of Charles Aronberg and Blanch Silverstone (Aronberg). Aronberg attended Washington University, St. Louis, MO in under Horst Woldemar Janson, graduating in 1947. She continued her M.A. in 1949 under Janson, who himself was still pursuing his Ph. D. at Harvard. While a graduate assistant in art history for the 1949-1950 year, she met Irving Lavin, a student in her class taking his first art history course. Aronberg gained a certificate at the Free University of Brussels also in 1949. In 1952 she married Lavin two years her junior, who had been admitted to Harvard graduate school in art history. Between 1953-1955 she worked as a curator of the Robbins Print Collection, Arlington, MA. From 1955 until 1957 she was a Fulbright fellow in Rome, Italy. In 1957 she became a staff writer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, advancing to researcher in 1959. She worked as a consultant for the publishers Time, Inc., beginning in 1965 and the Heritage Press, a fine-press editions publisher, editing a two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Painters by Giorgio Vasari for the latter in 1967. In 1972 she wrote the volume on Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation, for the important Art in Context series issued by Allan Lane. Her Ph.D. was awarded in 1973 from New York University with a dissertation on Piero Della Francesca. In 1975 she resigned from the Metropolitan to become visiting professor of art history at Princeton University. She published Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art 1977 which won the Charles Rufus Morey Award from College Art Association of America. She was also a visiting professor at Yale University in 1977, and at the University of Maryland in 1979. In 1981 her monograph on Piero’s “Baptism of Christ” was published by Yale University Press. Lavin wrote a history of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton in 1983, Eye of the Tiger. She was the organizing scholar for the 1995 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C., on “Piero Della Francesca and His Legacy.” Much of Lavin’s career was determined by her marriage and dual-career with her husband, Irving Lavin. When her husband was appointed at New York University in 1963, she worked at the Metropolitan and continuing her graduate work at NYU. She was never a derivative scholar, however, and her works stands separate in method and merit from her husband’s. She has written that the bulk of her research has been through personal interest rather than employment. As such, she said, she could afford to publish books that weren’t written to persuade tenure committees. Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art was an early publication in the primary source documentation within the field of the history of collecting.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Studies in Urbinate Painting, 1458-1474: Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, and Joos van Ghent. New York University, 1973; Seventeenth-century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art. New York: New York University Press, 1975; Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters. 2 vols. New York, Heritage Press, 1967; Piero della Francesca: The Flagellation. New York: Penguin, 1972; Piero della Francesca’s “Baptism of Christ”. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; The Eye of the Tiger: The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883-1923, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Department of Art and Archaeology and Art Museum, 1983; edited, IL 60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday. New York: Italica Press,1990; The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431-1600. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990; edited. Piero Della Francesca and His Legacy Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1995.

Sources

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. 34; Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. “Preface.” IL 60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday. New York: Italica Press,1990, pp. ix-xii.

Piero Della Francesca and quattrocento art scholar. Aronberg was the daughter of Charles Aronberg and Blanch Silverstone (Aronberg). Aronberg attended Washington University, St. Louis, MO in under Horst Woldemar Janson<

Lavin, Irving

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lavin, Irving

Gender: male

Date Born: 1927

Place Born: St. Louis, Saint Louis City, MO, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Late Antique, Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Architectural historian of Bernini and the late antique era; New York University and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton scholar. Lavin studied under Horst Woldemar Janson at Washington University, St. Louis, graduating with a B.A., 1949. His graduate teaching assistant for his first art-history course was Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, whom he later married. He continued graduate work at Cambridge University, 1948-49 and then New York University, where he received his M.A. in 1952 under Richard Krautheimer. That same year he married Aronberg, two years his senior. Lavin was awarded a second M. A. at Harvard University in 1953; his Ph.D., followed in 1955, written under Ernst Kitzinger, for whom he was one of that expatriate’s first American Ph. D., students. Lavin served in the United States Army from 1955-1957. He was a Matthews Lecturer for Columbia University in 1957 and a senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks between 1957 and 1959. Lavin was awarded the A. Kingsley Porter Prize in 1959 (the first of three times, written for an outstanding article in the Art Bulletin). He lectured in art history at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, from 1959 until 1962 and was Fulbright senior scholar from 1961-1963. In 1963 he was appointed associate professor (and later professor) at Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. From 1965 to 1966 he was a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Lavin’s monograph, Bernini and the Crossing of St. Peter’s, the major monograph on Bernini’s contribution to St. Peter’s Cathedral, Rome, was published in 1968. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for the 1968-1969 year. In 1973 he was named professor of historical studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J. In 1975 Lavin was Franklin Jasper Walls Lecturer at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. He served on the board of directors of the College Art Association from 1976-1980. His Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts, 1981, using the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, as the paradigm, outlined Bernini’s use of theatrics to coordinate architecture, painting, sculpture. He delivered the the Slade Lectures at Oxford University in 1985. In 1993 Lavin hosted a centennial birth symposium on the work of Erwin Panofsky at the Institute for Advance Study, where Panofsky had also been a member. That year, too, his collected essays, Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso, were published. Lavin made headlines in 1996 when he authenticated a marble bust Pope Gregory XV as a lost work of Bernini. In 2001 he was named emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2004, Lavin presented the 53rd A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, “More Than Meets the Eye,” at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C. Lavin’s work is wide-ranging, from Late Antique architecture to North African floor mosaics, from the renaissance (Donatello, Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Giovanni Bologna) to baroque (Caravaggio and Bernini). He has also written essays on Picasso and Jackson Pollock. Lavin’s approach to architecture is essentially iconographic, an interpretation of the symbolic details of a structure to create a meaning, similar to Erwin Panofsky whose essays he edited in 1995. Lavin’s work was greatly admired in his time. The great baroque scholar Anthony Blunt wrote that Lavin’s Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts supplied “a new and deeper understanding of the artist’s ideas and methods.” Michael Jaffé and Charles Hope also praised his scholarship.

Selected Bibliography

[bibliography to 1989:] “Bibliography of the Works of Irving Lavin, 1955-1989.” IL 60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday. New York: Italica Press,1990, pp. xiii-xviii; [dissertation:] The Bozzetti of Gianlorenzo Bernini. Harvard, 1955; [collected essays] Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; “The House of the Lord: Aspects of the Role of Palace Triclinia in the Architecture of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” Art Bulletin 44 (1962): 1-28; Bernini and the Crossing of St. Peter’s. New York University Press, 1968; Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press , 1980; and Gordon, Pamela. Drawings by Gianlorenzo Bernini: From the Museum der Bildenden, Kunste Leipzig, German Democratic Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1981; Bernin et l’Art de la Satire Social. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris, 1987; edited, and Plummer, John. Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss. 2 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1978; Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of his Art and Thought: A Commemorative Volume. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986; and Tronzo, William, eds. Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987; Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside: A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) (symposium). Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study, 1995; edited. Panofsky, Erwin. Three Essays on Style. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996; Bernini e il Salvatore: la “buona morte” nella Roma del Seicento. Rome: Donzelli, 1998; Marner, Eugene, director. Art of the Western World, Program V, “Realms of Light, The Baroque.” [videorecording]. Intellimation (Santa Barbara, CA)/WNET (New York, NY), 1989; Santa Maria del Fiore: il Duomo di Firenze e la Vergine incinta. Rome: Donzelli, 1999.

Sources

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. 70; Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. “Preface.” IL 60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday. New York: Italica Press,1990, pp. ix-xii; Institute for Advanced Study, Faculty and Emeriti, http://www.ias.edu/About/faculty/lavin.php.

Lavedan, Pierre

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lavedan, Pierre

Other Names:

Pierre-Louis-Léon Lavedan

Gender: male

Date Born: 1885

Date Died: 1982

Place Born: Boulogne-sur-Seine, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), sculpture (visual works), and urban design

Overview

Professor of the history of modern art at the Sorbonne (1942 – 1955); scholar of the history of urban architecture. Lavedan attended high school (Lycée) at Roanne, Chartres, and Paris (Lyceé Henri IV). He then studied at the école Normale Supérieure and at the école Pratique des Hautes études, graduating in 1909 (agrégé d’histoire). He taught as a high school teacher in lycées in Limoges and in Reims. During World War I he served in the French army. In 1919 he traveled to Greece to become the head of an educative mission of the Greek government, while also being professor at the Institut d’études françaises in Athens. There he wrote his first article on urban history: Un problème d’urbanisme: la reconstruction de Salonique, appearing in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1922. He returned to France the previous year where he obtained a teaching position at the University of Toulouse. In 1926 Lavedan gained the degree of docteur ès-lettres with a thesis on the history of urban architecture from antiquity to the middle-ages, which was published the same year, the first part of the series Histoire de l’urbanisme. In 1926, too, he published his secondary thesis: Qu’est-ce que l’urbanisme? Introduction à l’histoire de l’urbanisme. After teaching at the University of Montpellier, he began his career at the Sorbonne in 1929. He first taught the history of art of Catalone, in which field he published L’architecture gothique religieuse en Catalogne, Valence et Baléares (1935). From 1939 to 1955 he held the position of professor of the history of modern art, succeeding René Schneider. In 1940 he received the additional appointment of professor of the general history of architecture at the école Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1941 he published the second volume of Histoire de l’urbanisme: Renaissance et temps modernes. In 1942, he became the director of the Institut d’Urbanisme de l’Université de Paris, which position he held until 1965. His general survey of French architecture appeared in 1944, and, between 1944 and 1949, his two-volume Histoire de l’art was published. In the post-war period Lavedan, an advocate for the preservation of the French heritage, was involved in urban reconstruction. The third part of his Histoire de l’urbanisme: époque contemporaine, appeared in 1952. This broad survey deals with various aspects of the history of town planning from the reign of Napoleon until the Second World War, from Paris to cities all over the world. It provides a great deal of information on town planning in the United States, including the cities of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. Lavedan retired from the Sorbonne in 1955 and was succeeded by André Chastel, of whom he did not approve to occupy the position. Between 1966 and 1982, revised editions of his urban history series appeared co-authored with Jeanne Hugueney and Philippe Henrat. A number of Lavedan’s work focus on the urban history of Paris. Lavedan died in relative obscurity in 1982, no leading newspapers observing his death. In his study, Qu’est-ce que l’urbanisme?, Lavedan defines his work as the study and documentation of city planning, which includes the city’s material layout and organization in relation with sociological, economical, and geographical factors. While the French word urbanisme in his view encompasses a number of aspects extending beyond art history, he specifies his own field of research as a new chapter of the general history of art: a history of urban architecture. His studies document the history and development of city plans and are richly illustrated. Lavedan’s oeuvre was used by a number of scholars in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2005 his Histoire de l’urbanisme was the topic of a Ph.D. dissertation by Isabelle Grudet (Université de Paris-VIII).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography :] Pinon, Pierre. Pierre Lavedan, de l’histoire de l’art à l’architecture urbaine Le Visiteur 2 (1996): 112-128; [dissertation:] Histoire de l’architecture urbaine. Antiquité – Moyen âge. University of Paris, 1926, published, Paris: H. Laurens, 1926; Histoire de l’urbanisme. Antiquité – Moyen âge. Paris: H. Laurens, 1926; Qu’est-ce que l’urbanisme? Introduction à l’histoire de l’urbanisme. Paris: H. Laurens, 1926; Dictionnaire illustré de la mythologie et des antiquités grecques et romaines. Paris: Hachette, 1931; L’architecture gothique religieuse en Catalogne, Valence et Baléares. Paris, H. Laurens, 1935; Palma de Majorque et les îles Baléares. Paris, H. Laurens, 1936; Histoire de l’urbanisme. Renaissance et temps modernes. Paris: H. Laurens, 1941; L’architecture française. Paris: Larousse, 1944, English, French Architecture. London: Pelican Books, 1956; Histoire de l’art. 2 vols., vol. 1., and Besques, Simone. Antiquité, 2. Moyen âge et temps modernes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944-1949; Histoire de l’urbanisme. époque contemporaine. Paris: H. Laurens, 1952; Représentation des villes dans l’art du moyen âge. Paris: Van Oest, 1953; Urbanisme et architecture. études écrites et publiées en l’honneur de Pierre Lavedan. Livres et articles consacrés à l’architecture et à l’histoire de l’urbanisme par Pierre Lavedan. Paris: H. Laurens, 1954; and Hugueney, Jeanne. Histoire de l’urbanisme. Antiquité. Paris: H. Laurens, 1966; and Hugueney, Jeanne. L’urbanisme au Moyen âge. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1974; and Hugueney, Jeanne, and Henrat, Philippe. L’urbanisme à l’époque moderne: XVIe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1982.

Sources

Dictionnaire biographique contemporain. (1954-1955), p. 389-390; Charle, C. Dictionnaire biographique des universités. Faculté des lettres de Paris, 1809-1939. 2 (1966), p.126-128; Cohen, Jean-Louis. L’ ‘architecture urbaine’ selon Pierre Lavedan Les cahiers de la recherche architecturale 32-33 (1993); Pinon, Pierre. Pierre Lavedan, de l’histoire de l’art à l’architecture urbaine Le Visiteur 2 (1996): 112-128; Aboulker, Delphine. Quelques éléments biographiques Institut national de l’histoire de l’art, 2003, www.inha.fr/IMG/pdf/fonds-lavedan.pdf; Masson, D. “Lavedan, Pierre.” Dictionnaire de biographie française 115 (2003), p. 45.

Professor of the history of modern art at the Sorbonne (1942 – 1955); scholar of the history of urban architecture. Lavedan attended high school (Lycée) at Roanne, Chartres, and Paris (Lyceé Henri IV). He then studied at the école Normale

Lavalleye, Jacques

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lavalleye, Jacques

Gender: male

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1974

Place Born: Saint-Josse-ten Noode, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Subject Area(s): archaeology

Overview

Professor of Art History; founder of the Institute of Art History and Archaeology at the Catholic University of Louvain (1942). Lavalleye studied first history and later art history at the Catholic University of Louvain. In 1922, he obtained a doctoral degree in history (Faculty of Arts) and began his career at the General State Archives and subsequently at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. His teachers in art history were R. Lemaire (1878-1954), F. Mayence (1879-1959) and René Maere (1869-1950). In 1936, he defended his dissertation on Justus van Gent, a Flemish painter who traveled to Italy and, from 1472 onwards, worked in the service of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Lavalleye’s adviser was Maere. In 1937, he obtained a teaching position in history of art (history of painting) at the Catholic University of Louvain. Some years later, he was appointed professor and gradually took over the courses of his master, Maere, who retired in 1948. In 1942, Lavalleye founded the Institute of Art History and Archaeology at the Catholic University of Louvain. The courses in the renewed curriculum were taught in both French and Dutch, the national languages of the country. Another decisive moment in the history of the institute was the creation, in 1965, of separate Flemish and French sections, independent from each other. Lavalleye was the first president of the French section. In 1969, one year before his retirement as professor, he published a substantial article on the history of the institute, in which he also looked back on the history of the teaching of art history and archaeology at Louvain from the late nineteenth century onwards. In addition to his university career, Lavalleye occupied a leading position in several other institutions, including the Académie Royale d’Archéologie de Belgique. Strongly committed to promote art historical research, he worked closely together with Paul Coremans, the head of the Central Iconographical Records for National Art and Central Laboratory of Belgian Museums in Brussels (ACL, which became, in 1957, the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium’s Artistic Heritage). Together, they founded the National Centre for the Study of the “Primitifs Flamands” (1949). It is internationally known for its triple series of publications: the Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux au quinzième siècle (Primitifs Flamands Corpus), the Répertoire des peintures flamandes des quinzième et seizième siècles, and the Contributions à l’étude des Primitifs Flamands. In 1953-1958, Lavalleye published a two-volume catalog on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish and Hispano-Flemish art preserved in Spain: Collections d’Espagne (published in the Répertoire series). In 1964 Le palais ducal d’Urbin appeared which is the seventh volume in the Corpus. It is an elaborate study of the works of the above-mentioned Justus van Gent preserved at the Palazzo ducale in Urbino. In 1958, Lavalleye became Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Catholic University of Louvain and in the same year he was elected corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Fine Arts of Belgium (Section Fine Arts). From that moment onwards, he served the Academy in several positions. In 1962, he became member, and between 1970 and 1974 he was permanent secretary. He also played an active role in the International Union of Academies, housed in Brussels. From 1962 onwards, he was the secretary and subsequently the president of the committee of the Biographie Nationale, published by the Academy. Lavalleye wrote both the history of this committee (1966) and the 200-year history of the Academy (1973). Lavalleye developed a special interest and expertise in historiography and methodology. In addition to the above-mentioned historiographical essays, he published, in 1946, a comprehensive survey of the history of archaeology and art history, paying much attention to methodological approaches: Introduction à l’archéologie et à l’histoire de l’art. Revised versions of this useful handbook appeared in 1958 and 1972. Lavalleye’s creative scholarly work, his broad reflections on the discipline and its methods, his multifaceted organizational skills, and the generous support which he gave to students and young scholars, set him apart as a major figure in the development of art historical research in Belgium and beyond.

Selected Bibliography

[complete list, see:] Culot, Paul “Bibliographie des Travaux de M. Jacques Lavalleye” in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art offerts au Professeur Jacques Lavalleye. Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1970, pp. XXIII-L and the Supplement in Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 7 (1974): 14-18; Juste de Gand. Peintre de Frédéric de Montefeltre. Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1936; Collections d’Espagne. Anvers: De Sikkel, 1953-1958; Le palais ducal d’Urbin. Brussels: Centre national de recherches “Primitifs flamands”, 1964; Historique de la Commission de la Biographie Nationale. Brussels: é. Bruylant, 1966; Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Lucas van Leyden: the Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1967; “La conception de l’histoire de la peinture en Belgique depuis le début du XXe siècle” Revue belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 37 (1968): 89-98; “L’Institut Supérieur d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art de l’Université Catholique de Louvain. Histoire et témoignage” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 2 (1969): 7-38; “Histoire de l’histoire de l’art” in Encyclopédie de la Pléiade: Histoire de l’Art, 4. Paris, 1969, pp. 1320-1366; Introduction à l’archéologie et à l’histoire de l’art. Gembloux: Duculot, 1972; L’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et de Beaux-Arts de Belgique 1772-1972. Esquisse historique. Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1973.

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, p. 37 n. 75; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 503-504; De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique, 2, Brussels: éditions L’Avenir, 1936, p. 647; De Ruyt, Fr. “Jacques Lavalleye, Historien d’Art et Professeur” in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art offerts au Professeur Jacques Lavalleye. Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1970, pp. XV-XXI; Hackens, Tony “In piam memoriam M. le Professeur Jacques Lavalleye (1900-1974)” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 7 (1974): 9-13; Faider-Feytmans, G. “Hommage à la mémoire de Jacques Lavalleye” Bulletin de la Classe des Beaux-Arts de l’Académie royale de Belgique 5/56, (1974) 10: 137-139; Vercauteren, Fernand “Hommage à Jacques Lavalleye” Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques de l’Academie Royale de Belgique 5e série, 60 (1974-10): 202-204.

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