Art Historians

Falke, Jakob, Ritter von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Falke, Jakob, Ritter von

Other Names:

Ritter Jakob von Falke

Gender: male

Date Born: 21 June 1825

Date Died: 08 June 1897

Place Born: Ratzeburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): aesthetics

Career(s): curators

Overview

Museum curator; historian of taste and esthetics. Falke studied classical Philology at Erlangen and Göttingen and worked initially as teacher. He joined the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as curator in Nuremberg in 1855. In 1858 he became of Librarian (archivist) and advisor of the art collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vienna. During his time in Vienna, Falke became interested in the contemporary design movement of useful arts, already flourishing in England. Writing articles in newspapers, such as the Wiener Zeitung, from 1860, Westermanns Monatshefte in 1862, and Gewerbehalle, 1863 onward, he framed the issues of art in terms of industrialism, commoditization and the aspiration of the middle class. Like other arts-and-crafts movement theorists, Falke identified good design based upon an object’s function. He saw the excellence of form in simple utensils derived from triumvirate of their purpose, material and technical fabrication. In 1860 he published Das Kunstgewerbe, writings which mirrored the ideas were in vogue in England in the Journal of Design and Manufactures, published by Henry Cole. His friendship with Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg led to the two of them founding the Kaiserliches Königliches österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (now the österreiches Museum für Angewandte Kunst) in Vienna in 1864, with Falke the museum’s first deputy curator. In 1866 Falke published Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks integrated modern esthetics with living. Die Kunst im Haus published in 1871, was the first guide in the German language for interior decoration, written in an analytical and discursive way for a general audience. Although a Renaissance historian, he suggested people avoid the style for the daily living. He was knighted by the Kaiser in 1874. Falke wrote a social history of classical Greece and Rome, Hellas und Rom: eine Culturgeschichte des classischen Alterthums in 1878. Aesthetik des Kunstgewerbes (1883) is his clearest example of his own aesthetic of applied art (Ottlinger). At Eitelberger’s death in 1895, Falke succeeded him as director Museum für Kunst. Falke’s household esthetics fell out of favor with the advent of the highly decorative Jugendstil movement. His older brother, Johann (1823-1876) was an economic historian and Falke’s son, Otto Falke, was also a prominent art historian and museum director in Berlin. Falke’s Imperial Museum for Art and Industry was modeled on the South Kensington Museum (modern Victoria and Albert Museum), the first applied arts museum in Europe. His popular works on taste followed the lead Charles L. Eastlake had launched with his Hints on Household Taste, 1868 and Gottfried Semper in Germany. He died in Lovrana, Italy, which is present day Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia.

Selected Bibliography

Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks. Leipzig: T. D. Weigel, 1866; Geschichte des fürstlichen Hauses Liechtenstein. 3 vols. Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1868-1882; Die Kunst im Hause: geschichtliche und kritisch-ästhetische Studien über die Decoration und Ausstattung der Wohnung. Vienna: Gerold, 1871, English, Art in the House: Historical, Critical, and Aesthetical Studies on the Decoration and Furnishing of the Dwelling. [authorized American edition, translated from the 3d German edition.] Boston: L. Prang and Company, 1879; Aesthetik des Kunstgewerbes, ein Handbuch für Haus, Schule und Werkstätte. Stuttgart: W. Spemann 1883; Hellas und Rom: eine Culturgeschichte des classischen Alterthums. Stuttgart: W. Spemann, 1878-1880; “Das Kunstgewerbe.” in, Wien, 1848-1888. 2 vols. Vienna: Gemeinderathe der Stadt Wien/C. Konegen, 1888; Geschichte des Geschmacks im Mittelalter und andere Studien auf dem Gebiete von Kunst und Kultur. 1892.

Sources

Falke, Jakob von. Lebenserinnerungen. Leipzig: G.H. Meyer, 1897; Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 1, p. 284; Ottillinger, Eva B. “Jakob von Falke (1825-1897) und die Theorie des Kunstgewerbes.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 42 (1989): 205-23; Ottillinger, Eva B. “Falke, Jakob von.” Dictionary of Art 10: 772; “Falke, Jakob, Ritter von.” österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 1: 284; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie 3. 2nd ed.(2006): 225; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 86-87.

Faison, S. Lane, Jr.

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Faison, S. Lane, Jr.

Other Names:

S. Lane Faison

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 2006

Place Born: Washington, DC, USA

Place Died: Williamstown, Berkshire, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Overview

Medievalist; chair of the department of Art, Williams College 1940-1969; Nazi-art-crime investigator during World War II. Faison was the son of Samson Lane Faison, Sr., a brigadier general in the United States Army, and Eleanor Sowers Faison (d. 1957). In 1923, at age 16, he visited Chartres cathedral, an event which he said transformed his life. Faison attended Williams College, Williamstown, MA, studying under Karl E. Weston, the chair of the art history department. After graduation in 1929, he continued for his Master’s Degree at Harvard University in 1930 and an MFA from Princeton in 1932. In 1932 Faison joined Yale as an associate professor of art. He married Virginia Gordon Weed (d. 1997) in 1935, returning to Williams College in 1936. He became head of the department of art in 1940, succeeding Weston. That year he hired William H. Pierson, Jr., to teach studio art and American art history. Faison served in the U. S. Naval Reserve, and after World War II, assisted in the “Art Looting Investigation Unit” (ALIU) of the Office of Strategic Services, with James S. Plaut (investigating the “Einsatzstab Rosenberg,” or art stolen from Jews under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg) and Theodore Rousseau, Jr., between 1945-1946. He worked along side another American colleague, John M. Phillips, who was documenting the Göring looted treasure. Because much of the art was bought through collaborators or outright plundered, Phillips and Faison worked to determine how the art was procured, who the lower-level culprits were, and where the art was hidden. Among his reports was that interviewing Hermann Voss, the director of the Dresden and Führermuseum. Faison wrote the report on the stolen art for Hitler’s Museum and Library in Linz, Austria. Though he argued that the art looters be included in the Nuremburg trials, this was ignored. He returned to Williams College in 1946 as a professor of art. Faison hired another medievalist, Whitney Stoddard and, together with Pierson, set about creating a school of art history at Williams based on direct experience with the object. He assumed directorship of the art museum at Williams in 1948. Faison returned to Germany in 1950 to be the Director of U. S. State Department Central Collecting Point [for art] in Munich, continuing through 1951. He was made a Chevalier of French Legion of Honor in 1952. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for the 1960-1961 year. In 1969 he stepped down as department chair. In 1971 he was awarded a D.Litt. from Williams College. In 1976 he was appointed emeritus professor and retired from the art museum. His papers are housed at the National Gallery of Art Library, Washgington, D. C., and the Archives of American Art. He died at his home in Williamstown at age 98. Faison led the group of three art history professors at Williams which became known coloquially as the “Holy Trinity” and later the “Williams art Mafia.” Because of their efforts, the college became the launching pad in the 1960s and ’70s for the careers of many major art museum directors and curators of the next generation. Ironically, Faison himself was little interested in museum work as a Harvard graduate student and himself avoided the famous museology/connoisseurship classes of Paul J. Sachs. Those who Faison’s teaching directly inspired included Arthur K. Wheelock, a curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C.; Alexander Powell III, a director of the National Gallery; James N. Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago; Robert Lane, director of the San Francisco Museum of Art; and Glenn Lowry director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Faison’s success was criticized in later years for inbreeding and sustaining the rarified world of art museumship: teaching a connoisseur-brand of art history to wealthy elite at a private, all-male school. The “Williams Mafia” as they were know, were not all from the school, but Lane, their mentor, had been a Williams graduate as well.

Selected Bibliography

Honoré Daumier: Third Class Railway Carriage in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. London: P. Lund, Humphries, 1946; A Guide to the Art Museums of New England. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958; “Barna and Bartolo di Fredi.” Art Bulletin 14 no. 4 (1932): 285-315; “A Gothic Processional Cross in the Museo cristiano.” Art Bulletin 17 (1935): 63-183; Manet. New York, H. N. Abrams, 1953; Handbook of the Collection, Williams College Museum of Art. Williamstown, MA: The Williams College Museum of Art, 1979.

Sources

[transcript] Faison, S. Lane. Interviews with Art Historians, 1991-2002. Getty Research Institute, Malibu, CA; Faison, S. Lane, Jr. And Gladly Teach. Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, [1989] 1990; [obituary:] Bailey, Michael J. “S. Lane Faison, 98, Art Scholar, Williams College Professor.” Boston Globe November 13, 2006, p. C7.

Fairbanks, Arthur

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Fairbanks, Arthur

Gender: male

Date Born: 1864

Date Died: 1944

Place Born: Hanover, Grafton, NH, USA

Place Died: Cambridge, Middlesex, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): ancient and Classical

Career(s): curators

Overview

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Director and curator of classical art. Fairbanks graduated from Dartmouth College, class of 1886. He later attended Yale Divinity School and the Union Theology Seminary. Fairbanks moved to the University in Freiburg (im Breisgau), Germany, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1890. He returned to the United States where he taught classical studies at the universities of Michigan, Yale and Dartmouth. During the 1898-1899 year he was a fellow at the American School in Athens. In 1907, Fairbanks was appointed curator of classical art for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. At the Boston museum, Fairbanks secured the acquisitions of the important finds acquired by the Museum by Edward P. Warren (1860-1928) and John Marshall (1862-1928), the gay couple who formed a team securing important works of sculpture and vase painting in Europe for the Museum earlier in the century. In 1908 Fairbanks was appointed Director of the Museum. Under his directorship the Museum moved to new facilities in Fenway Park. He retired from the Museum in 1925, continuing to teach at Dartmouth College.

Selected Bibliography

Athenian Lekythoi, with Outline Drawing in Glaze Varnish on a White Ground. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907; Athenian Lekythoi with Outline Drawing in Matt Color on a White Ground. New York, The Macmillan Company; London, Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914; Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases. Cambridge, MA: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Harvard University Press, 1928ff.; Greek Art: the Basis of Later European Art. New York: Longmans, Green, 1933; A Handbook of Greek Religion. New York: American Book Company, 1910.

Sources

Chase, George H. “Archaeological News and Discussions.” American Journal of Archaeology 48 no. 2 (April 1944): 179-180; “Arthur Fairbanks.” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) 42 (1944): 20.

Faille, J.-B. de la

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Faille, J.-B. de la

Other Names:

Jacob-Baart de la Faille

Gender: male

Date Born: 1886

Date Died: 1959

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés, Dutch (culture or style), and painting (visual works)

Overview

First author of a Van Gogh catalogue raisonné. De la Faille studied law at Utrecht University and participated in dramatic productions. He earned his doctor’s degree in 1913. Instead of working as a lawyer, however, he focused on the contemporary art scene and ethnographic topics, writing for various newspapers and magazines.He also wrote fiction. After reading a 1917 article “Over de literatuur over Van Gogh” (On the literature concerning Van Gogh) by the conservator Herman F. E. Visser (1890-1965) in De Beweging, de la Faille took up the idea, suggested by Visser, to write a critical catalog of the painter’s works. He was assisted in this by the van Gogh exponent H. P. Bremmer. Faille joined the auction house of Frederick Muller in Amsterdam where he learned the art trade first hand. The four-volume L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh. Catalogue Raisonné appeared in 1928. Shortly after the publication, an article in Kunst und Künstler voiced suspicion regarding the authenticity of a number of cataloged paintings. De la Faille had to change his judgment and soon was able to single out a group of false Van Goghs that had the same provenance: the Berlin Art Gallery Otto Wacker. As an appraiser, De la Faille himself had been misled by Wacker and had to admit his mistakes. He then published a supplement to his catalog in which he made the necessary corrections. This case, however, required a more systematic and comprehensive study on Van Gogh falsifications. De la Faille took up this challenge in his 1930 publication, Les Faux Van Gogh, in which he used the method of juxtaposing authentic and false works with the same subject. In 1939 de la Faille published a completely revised and updated catalog of the Van Gogh Paintings, with an introductory biography of the artist by Charles Terrasse. De la Faille continued to work on a further revision of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. His death in 1959 left the manuscript unpublished. An editorial board of eminent art historians, appointed in 1962, took over the project, under the chairmanship of Abraham Marie Wilhelmus Jacobus Hammacher. In 1970 the revised, augmented and annotated edition of de la Faille’s catalog, The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings, was published. Another catalog appeared under his name in 1992, Vincent van Gogh: the Complete Works on Paper: Catalogue Raisonné, a revision of the 1970 edition section on the works on paper and a reprint of de la Faille’s 1928 French text on the drawings, watercolors and lithographs. Faille’s approach was that of connoisseurship. De la Faille’s pioneering cataloging work on Van Gogh was inevitably not without errors, but his lasting impact is remarkable. His work was particularly criticized by Walther Jan Clemens Vanbeselaere, whose 1937 De Hollandsche periode (1880-1885) in het werk van Vincent van Gogh, chided de la Faille’s 1928 catalog for its lack of a scientific basis. Even he, however, affirmed its value as “the starting point for all further research.” In his lifetime his opinions were used to determine numerous van Gogh forgeries.

Selected Bibliography

L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh. Catalogue Raisonné. 4 vols. G. van Oest: Paris and Brussels, 1928; Les Faux Van Gogh. Paris: G. van Oest, 1930; Vincent van Gogh. New York: French and European publications, inc., 1939; The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff International, 1970; Vincent van Gogh: the Complete Works on Paper: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1992.

Sources

“Dr Jacob Baart de la Faille: 1886-1959.” in, de la Faille, J.-B. The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff International, 1970, p. 39; Hammacher, A. M. “Van Gogh and the Words” in The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff International, 1970, p. 25; “Dr Jacob Baart de la Faille 1886-1959” Ibidem, p. 39; Feilchenfeldt, Walter. “Van Gogh Fakes: the Wacker Affair, with an Illustrated Catalogue of the Forgeries” Simiolus 19 (1989), 4: 289-316.

Fahy, Everett, Jr.

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

**Image Credit:** Fondazione Federico Zeri

Full Name: Fahy, Everett, Jr.

Other Names:

Everett Philip Fahy, Jr.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1941

Date Died: 2018

Place Born: Darby, Delaware, PA, USA

Place Died: Davis, Yolo, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Frick Collection

Overview

Frick Collection Director, 1973-1986 and John Pope-Hennessy Chair of the department of European paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986-2009. Fahy (pronounced “Fay”), born to Everett Fahy, Sr. and Dorothy Jermaka (Fahy), was raised in Philadelphia, PA. While an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Fahy met his future chair namesake, John Pope-Hennessy in North Carolina. After graduation in 1962 he traveled to Europe where Pope-Hennessy suggested he study Domenico Ghirlandio. Fahy entered Harvard for his graduate work, studying under Sydney Joseph Freedberg and Federico Zeri. He received the National Gallery of Art’s David H. Finley fellowship in 1964, named for the Museum’s first director, David Finley allowing him travel in Europe. In Italy, armed with a Villa I Tatti Fellowship, he used the great library of Bernard Berenson, still administrated by Berenson’s secretary/mistress, Elisabetta “Nicky” Mariano (1887-1968). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968 writing on Ghirlandio’s followers under James S. Ackerman. Fahy was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. He was appointed a consultant to the Department of European Paintings in 1968, followed by a teaching appointment to New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1969 (through 1976). He joined the Metropolitan Museum of art as curator-in-charge in 1970. At the Metropolitan Fahy was charged with reinstalling the paintings collection–which entailed relabling the collection to conform to the reattributions by scholars such as Zeri. He also mounted the successful 1969 exhibition on Italian frescos. While curator of painting, director Thomas Hoving and curator of European Art Theodore Rousseau, Jr., authorized the sale of two paintings, van Gogh and a Dounier Rousseau paintings to a private dealer, austensibly without his knowledge, in 1971. Fahy resigned from the Met in 1973 to head the Frick Collection, New York, at the death of Harry D. M. Grier. At the Frick, Fahy oversaw the expansion of the museum and spearheaded the Museum’s brand of small but highly scholarly exhibitions. In 1986, after the replacement of Hoving, he returned to the Metropolitan as the Chair of European Paintings, succeeding Pope-Hennessy. Fahy himself was succeeded at the Frick by Charles Ryskamp. He remained at the Met as Chair until his retirement in 2009, succeeded by Keith Christiansen. He died due to complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandjo. Harvard University, 1968, published, New York: Garland, 1976; edited, The Wrightsman Pictures. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973; The Legacy of Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Paintings from Leningrad. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1979; “A History of the Portrait and its Painter.” in Rousseau, Theodore. Juan de Pareja by Diego Velázquez: an Appreciation of the Portrait. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, l97; Metropolitan Flowers. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Abrams, 1982.

Sources

Shirey, David L. “Everett Fahy of the Met Is Named Frick Director.” New York Times May 20, 1973, p. 63; Fahy, Everett. “Preface.” Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandjo. New York: Garland, 1976; Russell, John. “New Head of European Art at Met.” New York Times July 31, 1986, p. C16; [obituaries] Sandomir, Richard. “Everett Fahy, Museum Authority on European Painting, Is Dead at 77”. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/obituaries/everett-fahy-authority-on-european-painting-is-dead-at-77.html

Fagiolo Dell’Arco, Maurizio

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Maurizio

Gender: male

Date Born: 1939

Home Country/ies: Italy

Institution(s): Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Il Parmigianino, un saggio sull’ermetismo nel cinquecento. Rome, 1970.

Sources

Bazin 230 (sp. Faggiolo)

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Fagg, William Buller

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Fagg, William Buller

Gender: male

Date Born: 1914

Date Died: 1992

Place Born: Upper Norwood, Croydon, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), Ancient African, Ancient West African, ethnology, face masks, Ife (ancient Nigerian style), masks (costume), Nigerian, sculpture (visual works), and Yoruba (culture or style)

Overview

Historian of Yoruban and Nigerian art; Keeper of Ethnology at the British Museum; pioneer in the systematic study of African art. Fagg was the eldest son of an antiquarian book dealer, William Percy Fagg (d. 1939), Lilian Buller (Fagg). He studied Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1936. The following year he received an additional B.A. degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. In 1938 he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum, where he spent his entire career. During the war years 1942-45 he worked for the war effort at the Board of Trade monitoring cloth output. The Museum was restructured with curators given more control for departments. Fagg, who had returned in 1946, was given curatorial responsibility for Africa, purportedly because few others wanted it. Though he had had limited experience in Africana, he immediately selected the best objects from the collection for a post-war exhibition. His friendship with major African art dealers, such as Charles Ratton in Paris and early collectors, such as Josef Mueller of Switzerland, developed a level of connoisseurship in him not otherwise common among ethnographers. He assisted the eminent collectors William and Margaret Plass in their collecting of the art of French-speaking Africa. Eventually, they donated their holdings to the Museum. His art sensibilities were furthered by his friendship with artists such as Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and the artist and art historian Roland Penrose. Fagg traveled and researched in Nigeria (then the Belgian Congo) between 1949 and 1950 and again in 1953. In 1955 he became Deputy Keeper of the Department. The Museum of Primitive Art, New York (today part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), named him a consulting fellow in 1957 (through 1970). His brother, Bernard Fagg (1915-1987), a colonial officer in the region, established the first museums in Nigeria and headed the federal department of antiquities in Lagos, 1957-1963. William Fagg made an extensive trip, 1958-1959 as an agent of the Nigerian government, purchasing Benin art work for the newly founded Lagos museum. His 1958 Sculpture of Africa became a landmark on the subject, as was his Afro-Portuguese Ivories book (1959). He followed this in 1963 with Nigerian Images, which many consider the definitive account of the art history of Benin. He was the first to recognize Owo, Nigeria, as the center for art located between Ife and Benin. These ideas were formulated in the exhibitions he organized on Nigerian art at the First World Congress of Black Arts and Cultures in 1966 in Dakar. He suffered a mild stroke in 1967. In 1969 he was appointed to Keeper of African art department. He and his deputy Keeper, Bryan Cranstone (1918-1989), supervised the move of the entire collection to a new facility at Piccadilly in 1972, Museum of Mankind. Upon his retirement in 1974, he worked as a consultant for Christie’s. His final books, Yoruba: Sculpture of West Africa (with John Pemberton) [1982] and Africa and the Renaissance (with Ezio Bassani) [1988] date from this time. Fagg suffered another stroke and died at his home. Fagg, for better and worse, approached African sculptures in the western tradition, i.e., as the works of individual artists, which he identified through a combination of documentation, fieldwork and conjecture, rather than conceiving it as the accomplishment of “primitive” collective endeavors. He was among the first to devote rigorous art-historical scholarship to African art–connoisseurship and sociological explanations–contending that masterpieces from that continent needed no qualification on their greatness. A devout Roman Catholic, he viewed the non-western art as the embodiment of religious expression. Among his greatest accomplishments, he resoundingly disproved the notion that the realistic bronze heads of the Benin were not because of Portuguese (i.e. Western) influence, but rather an indigenous African development. Fagg devised a serious chronology of the Benin, the first serious attempt to understand African art historically and stylistically. He insisted, however, on terming the art “tribal,” despite cries from later scholars that the art was not created from peoples organized in that manner. The controversies of British anthropology interested him less, insisting that it was the discipline’s role to appreciate the achievements of other cultures as much to analyze them. His gifts as a scholar were diminished through a plodding pace (frustrating some colleagues) and a notably dull lecture style.

Selected Bibliography

“In Search of Meaning in African Art,” African Arts 7 (July 1973): 164-170; African Sculpture. Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1970; and Wilkinson, Alan G. African Majesty: from Grassland and Forest: the Barbara and Murray Frum Collection. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981; and Plass, Margaret. African Sculpture, an Anthology. London: Studio Vista, 1964; African Tribal Images: the Katherine White Reswick Collection. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968; The Art of Western Africa: Tribal Masks and Sculptures. London: Collins/UNESCO, 1967; Divine Kingship in Africa. London: British Museum, 1970; The Living Arts of Nigeria. London: Studio Vista, 1971; Eskimo Art in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1972; Nigerian Images: the Splendor of African Sculpture. New York: Praeger, 1963; and Pemberton, John. Yoruba, Sculpture of West Africa. New York: Knopf/Random House, 1982; Tribes and Forms in African Art [Congress for Cultural Freedom exhibition at the Berlin Festival, 1964]. London: Methuen, 1965; and Pemberton, John. Yoruba Beadwork: Art of Nigeria. New York: Rizzoli, 1980.

Sources

Tomes, Jason. “Fagg, William Buller.” Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] Picton, John, et al. “A Tribute to William Fagg.” African Arts 27 (July 1994): 26-33; The Daily Telegraph (London), July 15, 1992: 21; The Times, July 14, 1992; Willett, Frank. “William Fagg.” The Independent (London), July 14, 1992, p. 25; Waterfield, Hermoine. “Out of the Art of Africa: William Fagg.” The Guardian (London), July 16, 1992, p. 35.

Facio, Bartolomeo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Facio, Bartolomeo

Other Names:

Bartolomeo Facio

Gender: male

Date Born: before 1410

Date Died: 1457

Place Born: La Spezia, Liguria, Italy

Place Died: Naples, Campania, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): humanism and Renaissance

Overview

Renaissance humanist and early chronicler of artists. Facio was educated in Verona under Guarino Guarini and later (by late 1420s) studied Greek in Florence. He held several initial posts in Genoa and Lucca, before being named Genoese envoy to Naples in 1443. By 1445 he was in the employ of King Alfonso of Naples where he secured the job of royal historian and tutor to Prince Ferrante. After various translations and essays on happiness and the dignity of man, Facio issued his De viris illustribus in 1456, over ninety lives of his contemporaries organized by their professions. These included the architect Leon Battista Alberti (under “orators”) and Gentile da Fabriano, Jan van Eyck, Pisanello and Rogier van der Weyden. under “painters.” Facio introduced these biographies with a discussion of literature and art, broadly based upon the Ars poetica of Horace and the Prooemium by Philostratus the younger. As an art theorist, Facio praised verisimilitude and feeling, similar to contemporary rhetoricians. A painting’s ability to express emotion elevated that painter to the highest level in Facio’s view. As a biographer, he was one of the first author to discuss the works of the northern renaissance artists, proving for modern historians (Jan) van Eyck’s popularity in Italy. Facio mentions many paintings of the Eyck in Italy unknown today, including a St. Jerome panel in the Lomellini Triptych and another of women bathing notable for its effect of appearing to be in a mirror. He praised Rogier van der Weyden’s decorous rendering of the sitter’s character and underlying emotion. Among Italian masters, Facio praised Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello. In addition, he lists three sculptors, Lorenzo Ghiberti and his son, Vittorio, and Donatello.

Selected Bibliography

De viris illustribus (manuscript,. 1456), published as Mehus, Laurentius. Bartholomaei Facii De viris illustribus liber: nunc primum ex. ms. cod. in lucem erutus Florence: Ex typographio Joannis Pauli Giovannelli, 1745; Invective in Laurentium Vallam: Critical Edition. [includes essay by Paul Oskar Kristeller.] Naples: Società editrice napoletana, 1978.

Sources

Ridderbos, Bernhard. “From Waagen to Friedländer.” in, Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, Research. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005, p. 218; Kraye, Jill. “Facio, Bartolomeo.” Dictionary of Art; Baxandall, Michael. “Bartholomaeus Facius on Painting: A Fifteenth-century Manuscript of De viris illustribus.” Journal of the Warburg & Courauld. Institutes 27 (1964): 90-107; Weiss, R. “Jan van Eyck and the Italians.” Italian Studies 11 (1956): 1-15; Kristeller, Paul O. “The Humanist Bartolomeo Facio and his Unknown Correspondence.” in, From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly. New York: , 1965, pp. 56-74.

Fabbrini, Narciso

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Fabbrini, Narciso

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Subject Area(s): Baroque and Baroque Revival

Overview

Mentioned as making an important contribution to modern baroque scholarship (Montagu/Connors).

Selected Bibliography

Vita del Cav. Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, pittore ed architetto. Cortona: R. Bimbi, 1896.

Sources

[mentioned] Jennifer Montagu and Joseph Connors. “Rudolf Wittkower 1901-1971.” Introduction to Art and Architecture in Italy: 1600-1750. 6th edition, volume 1, Painting in Italy. Pelican History of Art. pp. ix.

Mentioned as making an important contribution to modern baroque scholarship (Montagu/Connors).

Eydoux, Henry Paul

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Eydoux, Henry Paul

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 1986

Home Country/ies: France

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

Overview

architectural history

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 489

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