Full Name: Erdmann, Kurt
Gender: male
Date Born: 1901
Date Died: 1964
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Islam, Islamic (culture or style), and religious art
Islamic scholar; instrumental in mounting the 1910 Munich exhibition of Islamic art with Ernst Kühnel.
Islamic scholar; instrumental in mounting the 1910 Munich exhibition of Islamic art with Ernst Kühnel.
Full Name: Ephrussi, Charles
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 24 December 1849
Date Died: 30 September 1905
Place Born: Odessa, Odessa, Ukraine
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): Northern European
Career(s): art critics
Author of a Dürer monograph; art critic; chief editor of Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Ephrussi was born to a Jewish family of grain exporters, as the youngest son of Léon Ephrussi (1826-1871) and Mina Lindau (1824-1888). The business based in Odessa (then part of the Russian Empire) later developed into a successful banking enterprise under the direction of Ephrussi’s grandfather. The young Ephrussi grew up in Odessa until age 10. He then moved to Vienna, where his father and his uncle Ignace further expanded the family business. The young Ephrussi was tutored in the prestigious family home, together with his siblings and cousins. He learned Latin, Greek, English, and German, while he spoke French and Russian. He had a special interest in art, especially in the drawings of Albrecht Dürer, which he saw at the Albertina. In 1871 his father set up a branch of Ephrusssi et Cie in Paris. He died the same year leaving Ephrussi’s elder brother, Jules, in charge. As the youngest, Charles was free to do whatever he liked. He soon traveled to Italy, where he spent a year collecting Renaissance art works, such as drawings, medallions, enamels, and tapestries. After his return to Paris, where he had his own suite of rooms in the Hôtel Ephrussi, he became involved in the contemporary art scene. He dedicated himself to art-historical research, and he became a regular contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and, to a lesser degree, the Chronique des arts et de la curiosité. In 1876 he published his first critical articles in the Gazette, “Jacopo de Barbarj. Notes et documents nouveaux”, and “Le Triptyque d’Albert Dürer exécuté pour Jacob Heller”. These studies provoked a controversy between Ephrussi and the director of the Albertina, Moriz Thausing, the author of a monograph of Dürer the same year. Ephrussi published further studies on the drawings of Dürer in nine installments in the Gazette, between 1877 and 1880. His later monograph was based on these articles. Both well-educated and among the highest social strata, Ephrussi regularly visited the private salons, hosted by ladies of distinctive families, such as Madame Straus (1849-1926), Princess Mathilde (1820-1904), Madame Lemaire (1845-1928), and Countess Greffulhe (1860-1952). Ephrussi shared with many others an interest in Japanese art objects, including woodcuts, folding screens, lacquer boxes, and netsuke. He owned several lacquer box- and an important netsuke collection. In 1878 he published a study on Japanese lacquer boxes on display in the Trocadéro, “Les lacques japonais au Trocadéro” in the Gazette. Ephrussi himself was involved in the organization of several exhibitions. In 1879 he curated, together with Gustave Dreyfus, an exhibition of 674 Old Master drawings, held in the École des Beaux-Arts. This exhibition led to Ephrussi’s friendship with the curator of the Department of paintings and drawings of the Louvre, L. Both de Tauzia (1823-1888). In the Gazette Ephrussi wrote articles on the curator’s acquisitions, including the Villa Lemmi fresco’s of Botticelli, which he had helped to bring over from Italy to Paris. He also authored a study on the collection of drawings bequeathed to the Louvre in 1878 by His de la Salle (1795-1878) and installed in 1882. To complete his research on the drawings of Dürer, he traveled to London, Vienna, Munich, visiting museums and private collections. With the assistance of his secretary, the poet Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), he revised and corrected his previously published articles, and incorporated them into a description of all the drawings in chronological order. This major work, Albert Dürer et ses dessins, appeared in 1882. The same year, Ephrussi helped organize a show of his friend, the academic painter Paul Baudry (1828-1886), in the Orangerie of the Tuileries, and was awarded the “Croix de la Légion d’honneur”. Ephrussi reviewed Impressionist exhibitions, eventually acquiring over forty works by Morisot, Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pisarro and Renoir. He appears in a top hat behind the guests in Renoir’s “Le déjeuner des canotiers” (the “Luncheon of the Boating Party”). In 1885 Ephrussi became co-owner of the Gazette. In 1887 his monograph on Baudry appeared. He also produced studies of the prints in early books such as the 1499 Dream of Poliphilus and the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle. From 1894 onwards Ephrussi fully devoted himself to the Gazette as its editor in chief during the time the magazine was becoming more scholarly. The popular anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus Affair caused repercussions on Ephrussi as well (E. de Waal). In 1903 he was honored as “Officier de la Légion d’honneur”. He died two years later, in 1905. The figure of Swann in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is modeled in part on Ephrussi. In the introduction to his study, Albert Dürer et ses dessins, Ephrussi celebrated the 1879 exhibition of old masters in Paris as finally giving Dürer the appreciation they deserved in France. One of Ephrussi’s goals was to contribute to a better knowledge in France of the “greatest master of Germany”. In this work all Dürer’s drawings are documented, previously unpublished drawings from private collections were reproduced in facsimile. While Thausing’s 1876 monograph, Albrecht Dürer: Geschichte seines Leben und seiner Kunst, revised in 1884, and subsequently translated into English and French, is still a reference book, Ephrussi’s work was overshadowed by this work and later catalogs (Hélène de Givry).
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliographie des ouvrages de Charles Ephrussi” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité 39 (1905): 275-277; De Givry, Hélène. http://whww.inha.fr/spip.php?article2310; Étude sur le triptyque d’Albert Dürer, dit le tableau d’autel de Heller. Paris: D. Jouaust, 1876; Le Tableau d’autel de Heller, Jacopo de Barbarj et le professeur Thausing. Paris: A. Quantin, [1877]; [in collaboration with Dreyfus, Gustave] Catalogue descriptif des dessins de maîtres anciens exposés à l’École des beaux-arts, mai-juin, 1879. Paris: G. Chamerot, 1879; Les Nouvelles Acquisitions du musée du Louvre: Fra Angelico, Domenico Ghirlandajo, Sandro Botticelli. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882; Albert Dürer et ses dessins. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882; Les Dessins de la collection His de la Salle. Paris: A. Quantin, 1883; Paul Baudry, sa vie et son Åuvre. Paris: L. Baschet, 1887 ; Étude sur le Songe de Poliphile, (Venise 1499 et 1545, Paris 1546). Paris: L. Techener, 1888; “Le Vicomte Both de Tauzia” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 38 (1888) : 158-160; Étude sur la Chronique de Nuremberg de Hartmann Schedel, avec des bois de Wolgemut et W. Pleydenwurff. Paris: L. Techener, 1894.
Thausing, Moritz. “Charles Ephrussi, Étude sur le triptyque d’Albert Dürer, dit le tableau d’autel de Heller.” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 12 (1877): 283-287; D’Amat, Fr. “Ephrussi Charles.” in D’Amat, Roman, ed. Dictionnaire de biographie française 12. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1970, p. 1350; Kolb, P. and Adhemar, Jean. “Charles Ephrussi (1849-1905), ses secrétaires: Laforgue, A. Renan, Proust: ‘sa’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 103 (1984): 29-41; De Givry, Hélène. “Charles Ephrussi” Le dictionnaire des historiens de l’art actifs en France http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article2310; “Ephrussi, Charles.” Dictionary of Art 10: 432; De Waal, Edmund. The Hare with Amber Eyes. A Family’s Century of Art and Loss. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010; [obituary:] Marguillier, Auguste. “Charles Ephrussi.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 34 (1905): 353-360; “Charles Ephrussi” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (October 7, 1905): 257-258.
Contributors: Monique Daniels
Author of a Dürer monograph; art critic; chief editor of Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Ephrussi was born to a Jewish family of grain exporters, as the youngest son of Léon Ephrussi (1826-1871) and Mina Lindau (1824-1888). The business based in
Full Name: Enlart, Camille
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1862
Date Died: 1927
Place Born: Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais departement, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), French (culture or style), Gothic (Medieval), Italian (culture or style), and sculpture (visual works)
Historian of French and Italian Gothic architecture; director of the Musée de Sculpture comparée 1903-1927. Enlart came from an established Picard family. He attended school in Paris, first at the école des Beaux-Arts where he studied drawing and in 1885 the école des Chartes, studying under Robert Charles de Lasteyrie du Saillant. His dissertation was on the Romanesque churches of Picardy. Enlart traveled to Italy in 1889 for two years studying the French influence in Italian Gothic architecture. He returned to France to become assistant librarian at his alma mater, the école des Beaux-Arts. He met the young art historian Wilhelm Vöge in 1893. In 1894 he issued two volumes of his sweeping survey on the gothic origins of Italian art, Origines françaises de l’architecture gothique en Italie and Les Origines françaises de l’art gothique en Italie. In 1896 he visited Cyprus under the auspices of the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts, where he was delighted to find “pure” Gothic architecture, untouched by the restorers’ efforts in France had changed the character of many medieval buildings. There Enlart measured the structures from the Crusades. Though previous work had been done by his compatriots the Charles-Jean-Melchior Vogüé and Baron Emmanuel Guillaume Rey (b.1837) in 1860, as well as by Britishers Edward I’Anson (1811-1888) and Sidney Vacher (1854-1934) in 1882-1883, Enlart was the first person to identify and systematically document the buildings. His resulting book on the architecture of Cyprus, L’Architecture gothique et de la Renaissance en Chypre, was published in 1899. Beginning in 1902, Enlart issued his Manuel d’archéologie française a survey of medieval arts from architecture to costume running to four volumes through 1916. In 1903, he was made curator of the Trocadéro Musée de Sculpture comparée (museum of comparative sculpture), a museum of plaster casts of French monuments. He wrote his opinion in the Bulletin monumental in 1906 that the flamboyant style (late Gothic) style had originated in England. This view caused great controversy in France and bitterness among some former friends, but is today Enlart’s observation is largely accepted. He issued a catalog of the collection in 1910 and achieved the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. An article on the pedagogy medieval artifactual archaeology appeared in 1911. He became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1925. At the end of his life, he donated his collection of medieval objects from Picardy to the Boulogne museum. A book on Gothic furniture remained uncompleted at Enlart’s death and was posthumously finished by Jean Verrier. He was a member of the école Française in Rome. Enlart advanced the argument that the Gothic style in Europe emanated from France, particularly through the Cistercian order. His principle areas of research were medieval architecture in the eastern Mediterranean and Italy. His belief that the Gothic style belonged so closely to France led him to propose renaming Gothic architecture “French architecture” or “ogival”. Throughout his career, he was a frequent contributor to the Bulletin monumental.
[complete bibliography:] Dufay, P. “Essai d’une bibliographie sommaire des travaux de Camille Enlart.” Camille Enlart, 1862-1927. Paris: J. Naert, 1929; Origines françaises de l’architecture gothique en Italie. Paris: Thorin, 1894; Les Origines françaises de l’art gothique en Italie. Paris: Thorin, 1894; Les Monuments de l’architecture romane et de transition dans la région picarde: Anciens diocèses d’Amiens et de Boulogne. Amiens: Yvert et Tellier, 1895; L’Architecture gothique et de la Renaissance en Chypre. 2 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1899, English, Hunt, D., ed. Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus. London: Trigraph/A. G. Leventis Foundation, 1987; Manuel d’archéologie française depuis les temps mérovingiens jusqu’à la Renaissance. 4 vols. Paris: A. Picard, 1902-1927; L’Art roman en Italie: L’Architecture et la décoration. Paris: A. Morancé, 1924; Les monuments des croisés dans le royaume de Jérusalem: architecture religieuse et civile. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1925; Villes mortes du moyen âge. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1920; Catalogue général du Musée de sculpture comparée au Palais du Trocadéro. Paris: A. Picard & Fils, 1910; “Origine anglaise du style gothique flamboyant.” Bulletin monumental 70 (1906): 38-81 and 74 (1910): 125-67; and Enlart, Desiré Louis Camille. “The Teaching of Mediaeval Archaeology.” American Historical Association. Annual Report [for 1909] (1911): 103-114.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 434; Camille Enlart, 1862-1927. Paris: J. Naert, 1929; Coldstream, Nicola. “Introduction: Camille Enlart and the Gothic Architecture of Cyprus.” in, Enlart, Camille. Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus. London: Trigraph/A. G. Leventis Foundation, 1987, pp. 1-10.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Historian of French and Italian Gothic architecture; director of the Musée de Sculpture comparée 1903-1927. Enlart came from an established Picard family. He attended school in Paris, first at the école des Beaux-Arts where he studied drawing and
Full Name: Enggass, Robert
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 20 December 1921
Date Died: 22 December 2003
Place Born: Detroit, Wayne, MI, USA
Place Died: Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, MI, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Career(s): art historians
Italianist art historian and translator. Enggass was the son of Clarence H. Enggass (b. 1884?) and Helen Strasburger (Enggass). During World War II he served in the Army Air Corps in 1942. After the war graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1946. He entered the University of Michigan, receiving his M.A. in 1949. The same year he married Catherine Ann Cavanaugh (1924-2015). Enggass received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1955. Written under Harold E. Wethey, the topic was a catalogue raisonné of Giovanni Battista Gaulli. While finishing his dissertation, he taught as an instructor at Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College, 1955-1956. Enggass taught professionally, first as an assistant professor at Williams College, 1956-1957 and the University of Buffalo, 1957- 1958 before joining the faculty of Pennsylvania State University in 1958. At Penn he served as Chairman of the Graduate Program beginning in 1960 and was promoted to associate professor; he was appointed Acting Head, Art History Department, 1963. Engass was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholarship to study at the University of Rome for the 1963-1964 year. Among the historians in Rome, he developed a long friendship with Luigi Salerno. Returning to the United States, he served as Chairman of the Art Department at Louisiana State University, 1965-1966 before re-joining Penn State as a full Professor Art History in 1966. There he published two books, Baciccio, (1966) and Italy and Spain 1600-1750, in the Sources and Documents in Art History series in 1970; augmented by Kress grants, 1966-1970.
He joined the Art History Department at the University of Kansas in 1971. His Early 18th Century Sculpture in Rome, 1976, received the Borghese Prize in 1977. Together with his wife, he published for the Vatican Nicola Pio’s Le vite di pittori scultori et architetti in 1977. His friendship with Salerno resulted in his translation with his wife, Catherine, in several of Salerno’s books into English, including his Pittori di paesaggio del seicento a Roma. Enggass finished his career as Callaway Professor of Art History at the University of Georgia in 1979. His interest in making primary source material available to English readers led himself and Catherine to publish translations of Carlo Malvasia’s Life of Guido Reni in 1980 and Carlo Ridolfi’s biography of Tintoretto, 1984. He retired to Ann Arbor where he died.
Enggass’ commitment to primary and secondary Italian-language art history material available in English carried through his career. In addition to the translations of Pio and Malvasia’s work, he translated and published scholarship by Salerno. All these translations were co-translated with his wife, Catherine.
Art historian of the Italian Renaissance scholar and translator.
Full Name: Engerand, Fernand
Gender: male
Date Born: 15 April 1867
Date Died: 10 November 1938
Place Born: Caen, Normandie, France
Place Died: Passy, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style)
Career(s): archivists and researchers
Institution(s): Musée social
Compiler of inventories of French royal art collections; deputy representing Calvados in French parliament (Chambre des députés) from 1902-1936; general secretary of the Musée social from 1898-1902. Engerand received his education from the lycée de Caen and the Institution Sainte-Marie, also in Caen. He was licensed in letters and law, and began his political career as a lawyer for the court of appeals in Paris. Later as deputy in the French legislature, Engerand sat on various government committees for public works and industrial projects. For four years, he served as secrétariat général of the Musée social, a research-based institution dedicated to urban social reform. Engerand was also a journalist who regularly wrote articles in newspapers and journals like Le Correspondant, L’Illustration, and L’Écho de Paris. In the mid-1890s, Engerand began writing for archival publications like the Revue de l’art français ancien et moderne (Nouvelles archives de l’art français) and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts on French art from the seventeenth thru nineteenth centuries. He was particularly dedicated to the art of his native region of Normandy, and in 1905 passed a law, the Projet de résolution relatif aux musées de province, that supported the study and inventory of local museums throughout the country.
Engerand’s most well-known contributions to art history, his inventories on the royal art collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Inventaire des tableaux du roy: inventaires des collections de la Couronne par Nicolas Bailly (1899) and Inventaire des tableaux commandés et achetés par la Direction des Bâtiments du Roi de 1710 à 1792 (1900)), reflect the nationalism felt by the generation of Frenchmen living in memory of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 (Weil-Curiel). After the First World War, such feelings also directed Engerand’s political career more towards foreign affairs and heavy industry (Jolly). He received multiple distinctions from the Académie française for his writings on recent French history and contemporary social issues and Franco-German relations. In 1899 he received the Marcelin Guérin prize for his book published that year, Ange Pitou, agent royaliste et chanteur des rues (1767-1846). In 1917, he received the same annually-awarded distinction for L’Allemagne et le fer: les frontières lorraines et la force allemande (1916). Lastly, in 1941, Engerand was awarded the Prix général Muteau for a book on art from his native Caen, Les Trésors d’Art religieux du Calvados, which his daughter published posthumously in 1940. A portion of his personal papers at the regional archives in Calvados were destroyed in 1944 from aerial bomblings during WWII.
Contributors: Emily Crockett, Lee Sorensen, and Yasemin Altun
Compiler of inventories of French royal art collections; deputy representing Calvados in French parliament (Chambre des députés) from 1902-1936; general secretary of the Musée social from 1898-1902. Engerand received his education from the lycée d
Full Name: Engelmann, Wilhelm
Gender: male
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
art historian; encyclopedist
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 378-379
art historian; encyclopedist
Full Name: Emmens, J. A.
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1924
Date Died: 1971
Place Born: Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands
Place Died: Utrecht, Netherlands
Home Country/ies: Netherlands
Subject Area(s): iconology
Director of the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence; Professor of Art History and Iconology at Utrecht University. Emmens attended the Marnix Gymnasium in Rotterdam. Between 1947 and 1955, he studied art history at Utrecht University where J. G. van Gelder was among his major influences. As a student, he wrote a thesis, Apelles en Apollo, about Dutch poems on seventeenth-century paintings. He became the research assistant for William S. Heckscher, during Heckscher’s years as Professor of Iconography and Early Medieval Art in Utrecht University. In 1958, Emmens went to Italy, as the Director of the Dutch Institute of Art History in Florence. In 1961, he returned to the Utrecht institute, again as a researcher. In 1964 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Rembrandt, which attracted so much scholarly attention it was published in 1968. As his adviser, van Gelder was instrumental in his appointment as Lector in Utrecht, in 1965. In the same year he also became Lector at the University of Amsterdam and met a young American student of Dutch art, later a major Rembrandt historian Gary Schwartz. Emmens was appointed Professor in de ‘algemene kunstwetenschap en ikonologie’ at Utrecht University in 1967, a position he occupied until his death. For a short time, Emmens was a member of the team of the Rembrandt Research Project, which was launched in the late 1960s. His plans for a systematic study of Rembrandt’s iconology were not realized. He died at age of 47 in 1971. At the time of Emmens’ death, he and Schwartz were collaborating on a volume on Dutch art for the Prentice-Hall series Sources and Documents in the History of Art. The volume never appeared. Peter Hecht, one of his students and later Professor of Art History at the same university, wrote a short essay on Emmens as an art historian and as a poet. Hecht notes that Emmens as a teacher paid particular attention to developing a critical attitude. Among Emmens’ students were Jochen Becker, Ella Reitma, Evert van Uitert, Carel Blotkamp, Frans Haks and Hans van Helsdingen. Emmens’ premature death prevented any but van Helsdingen to complete dissertations and to obtain doctorates under his supervision. Emmens’ own dissertation, Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst, deals with the various ways Rembrandt had been viewed throughout history and with Rembrandt’s own concepts on art and those of his early critics. Emmens attacked the romantic image of Rembrandt as an independent and rebellious genius, popularized in particular by the former Director of the Rijksmuseum, F. Schmidt-Degener. The Dutch art historian, Hessel Miedema, reviewed this book discussing shortcomings but concluding that this important study was a stimulus for further investigation in this field. In a number of shorter publications, mainly on sixteenth- and seventeenth- century painting, Emmens’ iconological research in particular focused on the relation between visual art and literature and on the emblematical meaning of representations. His original and innovative articles were highly appreciated among his colleagues. A similar scholarly approach is apparent in some iconographical works of Sturla Gudlaugsson, former Director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. In the obituary which Emmens wrote for Gudlaugsson, shortly before Emmen’s own death, he pointed to the Gudlaugsson’s historical awareness of artistic developments and his ability to compare image and text, having been in this way a source of inspiration to younger investigators. Emmens also highly valued Erwin Panofsky, whom he called in a commemorating article “the most brilliant and influential art historian of our time”.
“Ay Rembrant, maal Cornelis stem” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 7, 1956: 133-165; and Bruyn, Josua “De zonnebloem als embleem in een schilderijlijst” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 4 (1956): 3-9; and Bruyn, J. “The Sunflower Again” The Burlington Magazine 99 (1957): 96-97; and J.G. van Gelder De schilderkunst van Jan Vermeer: een voordracht. Utrecht: Kunsthistorisch Instituut, 1958; “Les Ménines de Vélasquez. Miroir des Princes pour Philippe IV” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 12, 1961: 51-79; “Natuur, onderwijzing en oefening. Bij een drieluik van Gerrit Dou” in Album Discipulorum , aangeboden aan Professor Dr. J.G. van Gelder, ter gelegenheid van zijn zestigste verjaardag, 27 Februari 1963. Utrecht: Dekker & Gumbert, 1963: 125-136; “H.Gerson, Seven Letters by Rembrandt” Book review. Oud Holland 78 (1963): 79-82; “Een fabel van Ariosto” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 15, 1964: 93-104; and De Jongh, E. “De kunsttheorie van Cobra, 1848-1948” Simiolus 1,1 (1966-1967): 51-64; “Erwin Panofsky as a Humanist”. Translated by Gary Schwartz. Simiolus 2,3 (1967-1968): 109-113; Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst. Rembrandt and the rules of art (proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1964) Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert [1968] Reprint Amsterdam, 1979 (= Verzameld werk 2); “In Memoriam Dr Sturla Gudlaugsson” Simiolus 4, 3 (1971): 123; “Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born under Saturn” Book review. Translated by Gary Schwartz. The Art Bulletin 53 (1971): 427-428; “‘Eins aber ist nötig’ – Zu Inhalt und Bedeutung von Markt- und Kuchenstücken des 16. Jahrhunderts” Completed by Jochen Becker. in Album Amicorum J.G. van Gelder. Edited by Bruyn, J; Emmens, J.A.; De Jongh, E; Snoep, D.P. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973: 93-101; “Apelles en Apollo: Nederlandse gedichten op schilderijen in de 17de eeuw” Kunsthistorische opstellen 1, Amsterdam, 1981: 5-60; For his complete art historical oeuvre, see Kunsthistorische opstellen. 2 vols. (= Verzameld werk 3 and 4) Amsterdam 1981, with bibliography, 2: 223-225.For his poetry, see: Gedichten en aforismen (= Verzameld werk 1) Amsterdam, 1989.
Miedema, H. “J.A. Emmens, Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst” Oud Holland 84 (1969): 249-256. Book review [personal correspondence, Gary Schwartz, December 2011]; [obituaries:] Bruyn, J. “In memoriam J.A. Emmens. August 17, 1924 – December 12, 1971” Simiolus 5, 1,2 (1971): 1-2; Reznicek, E.K.J. “J.A. Emmens” The Burlington Magazine 114 (1972): 245-246; Hecht, Peter “J.A. Emmens (1924-1971)” in Hecht, Peter; Hoogenboom, Annemieke; Stolwijk, Chris (eds.) Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland. Negen opstellen. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998: 169-192.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Monique Daniels
Director of the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence; Professor of Art History and Iconology at Utrecht University. Emmens attended the Marnix Gymnasium in Rotterdam. Between 1947 and 1955, he studied art history at Utrecht University where
Full Name: Éméric-David, T.-B.
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1755
Date Died: 1839
Place Born: Aix-en-Provence, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): Classical and sculpture (visual works)
Classical sculpture writer and critic. Éméric-David gained a law degree at the university at Aix-en-Provence in 1775. He moved to Florence and Rome were he became enthralled with art. In 1787 he inherited his father’s printing business, necessitating a move back to Aix. He was elected mayor of Aix in 1791, but as the French Revolution worsened for public officials, he moved to Paris and then briefly into hiding during the Reign of Terror. Paris became his new home and he resolved to be an art historian. In 1796 he published Musée olympique de l’école vivante des beaux-arts. The book attacked current art institutions such as the Salon, the Institut de France and the Louvre citing the lack of coverage they gave to modern artists. Éméric-David’s notion helped establish the Musée du Luxembourg exhibitions. In 1799, the Institut de France chose as its essay topic, “What were the reasons behind the perfection of antique sculpture, and how might it be achieved?” Éméric-David’s entry, his 1805 Recherches sur l’art statuaire, framed Greek art as the product of an indigenous tradition of artistic principles and rules of excellence connected to the master-pupil relationship. For Éméric-David, evolution in art derived from the artist and not from institutional strictures. He denied the argument of Johann Joachim Winckelmann that the Greek’s ideal beauty existed beyond natural observation. Greek art was perfect, he argued, because it was true to nature. Such notions caused both immense popularity and disagreement: it was counter to the writings of Antoine Quatremère de Quincy; sculptors and art students, however, took the Recherches as their guide. Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy resulted in ancient statuary, later Classical antiquities, coming to the Louvre. Much of the contemporary writing found these statues were inferior (Winckelmann for example saw is as the decline of the genre). Éméric-David’s proved himself a visionary for the less-appreciated art of Rembrandt, writing approvingly in Le musée français of the thirty-six works the Musée Napoléon (Louvre) mounted in 1807. His interpretation of Greek sculpture attributed the 3rd century BC era as one of further refinements, thus again drawing public approval for his theories. Éméric-David collaborated with Ennio Guirino Visconti to further alter the assumption of a 5th and 4th centuries decline. Emeric-David’s focused his attention on medieval art, long neglected in France and elsewhere. Though lacked any understanding of the objects, his interest in the genre introduced a nationalism into art history. His catalog of the Louvre collection with Visconti (1803-9). The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres elected him a member in 1816. In 1823 he completed the manuscript of Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt, who had died in 1814, publishing this joint art history, Histoire de l’art par les monumens, depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XIVe He also contributed information on artists for the Biographie universelle. An American edition of his essays, A Series of Studies, was brought out in English in Bost in 1875.Éméric-David’s ability to both reflect and make popular taste makes important for art history. His endorsement of Rembrandt in 1807 came at a time when the painter was much less appreciated than Rubens or Van Dyck. His writings on ideal beauty as the product of visible reality refined through careful selection, strongly endorsed the realistic tendencies of the new art of his era. The book’s detailed instructions on achieving perfection in art were used by both connoisseurs and art students.
Jupiter: Recherches sur ce dieu, sur son culte, et sur les monumens qui le représentent. Ouvrage précédé d’un essai sur l’esprit de l religion grecque. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1833; and Séroux d’Agincourt, Jean-Baptiste, and Dufourny, Léon, and Feuillet, Laurent François, and La Salle, Achille étienne Gigault de. Histoire de l’art part les monuments depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XVIe siècle. 6 vols. Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1811-1820; and Croze-Magnan, S. C., and Robillard-Pe´ronville, and Visconti, Ennio Quirino, and. Laurent, Henri. Le Muse´e francçais: recueil complet des tableaux, statues et bas-reliefs, qui composent la collection nationale: avec l’explication des sujets, et des discours historiques sur la peinture, la sculpture et la gravure. Paris: Imprimerie de L.-E. Herhan, 1803-1809; Suite d’e´tudes calque´es et dessine´es d’après cinq tableaux de Raphaël: accompagne´es de gravures de ces tableaux et de notices historiques et critiques. Paris: C. Bance et Aumont, 1818, English, A Series of Studies: Designed and Engraved after Five Paintings by Raphael. Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1875; Histoire de la peinture au Moyen A´ge: suivie de l’histoire de la gravure, du discours sur l’influence des arts du dessin, et du Muse´e Olympique. Paris: imprimerie Èdouard Blot, s.d.; Recherches sur l’art statuaire: conside´re´ chez les anciens et chez les modernes, ou, Me´moire sur cette question propose´e par l’Institut National de France: Quelles ont e´te´ les causes de la perfection de la sculpture antique, et quels seroieut les moyens d’y atteindre?. Paris: la veuve Nyon aine´, 1805; Muse´e Olympique de Le´cole vivante des beaux arts: ou conside´rations sur la ne´cessite´ de cet e´tablissement, et sur les moyens de le rendre aussi utile qu’il peut l’être. Paris: Plassan, s. d.[1796].
Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 130.
Classical sculpture writer and critic. Éméric-David gained a law degree at the university at Aix-en-Provence in 1775. He moved to Florence and Rome were he became enthralled with art. In 1787 he inherited his father’s printing business, necessit
Full Name: Elsen, Albert E.
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1927
Date Died: 1995
Place Born: New York, NY, USA
Place Died: Palo Alto, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period) and sculpture (visual works)
Rodin scholar and modernist art historian, Stanford University professor 1968-95. Elsen was born to Albert Elsen, Sr., and Julia Huseman (Elsen). His father was an attorney and his mother taught school. He served in the U.S. Army in the 752nd Tank Batallion in Italy during World War II, rising to the rank of sergeant major. He attended Columbia University where he graduated with distinction in 1949, continuing for his Master’s Degree in 1951. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship 1949-50. That year, too, he married Patricia Morgan Kline. He began his teaching career at Carleton College, Northfield, MN, in 1952 as instructor, rising to assistant professor of history of art. He received his Ph. D., from Columbia in 1955 writing his dissertation under Meyer Schapiro on August Rodin, a subject which would interest him his lifelong. In 1958 he moved to Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, as associate professor. Elsen was an earlier proponent of television for art education, appearing on the “Images of Man in Modern Art,” series in 1958, as well as acting as art commentator for KQED in San Francisco. In 1962 he published his groundbreaking art survery, Purposes of Art, which organized art by theme rather than historically. He became full professor at Indiana in 1963. In that year he also served as curator for the Rodin exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, a show which brought Rodin solidly into the modernist canon. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for 1966-67 to research the origins of modern sculpture and was an adviser to Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, 1966-68. He served on the board of the College Art Association of America 1966-70 and as president, 1974-76. In 1968 he accepted the position of professor of art history at Stanford University. In 1975 he was named Walter A. Haas Professor of Art History, a title he held until his death. At Stanford, Elsen built a large collection of outdoor sculpture and the second largest Rodin collection in the world, through the collector B. Gerald Cantor. He divorced his first wife and married, Sharon McClenahan. In 1981 he served as director of the National Gallery of Art’s enormous “Rodin Rediscovered” exhibition in Washgington, D. C. He suffered a heart attack at his home at age 67 and died. His students included Kirk Varnedoe.Elsen’s Purposes of Art was a thematic rather than historic survey of art history was written to counterman a linear concept of art history. As a Rodin scholar alarmed by the fakes and poorly issued estate copies of the sculptor’s work, he helped write a comprehensive “Statement on Standards for Sculptural Reproduction and Preventive Measures to Combat Unethical Casting in Bronze” using his position as president of the College Art Association to launch.
and Varnedoe, J. Kirk, and Thorson, Victoria, and Geissbuhler, Elisabeth Chase. The Drawings of Rodin. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972; The Gates of Hell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985; Modern European Sculpture, 1918-1945: Unknown Beings and Other Realities. New York: G. Braziller, 1979; The Partial Figure in Modern Sculpture: from Rodin to 1969. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1969; Pioneers of Modern Sculpture. London: Arts Council of Great Britain/Hayward Gallery, 1973; Rodin & Balzac: Rodin’s Sculptural Studies for the Monument to Balzac from the Cantor, Fitzgerald Collection. Beverly Hills, CA: Cantor, Fitzgerald, 1973; and Alhadeff, Albert. Rodin Rediscovered. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1981; Rodin’s Thinker and the Dilemmas of Modern Public Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985; Purposes of Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1962.
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. 76 cited; [obituaries:] Smith, Roberta. “Albert Elsen, 67, Art Historian And an Authority on Rodin.” New York Times, February 8, 1995, p. 9; Workman, Bill. “Albert Elsen.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1995, p. D5.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Rodin scholar and modernist art historian, Stanford University professor 1968-95. Elsen was born to Albert Elsen, Sr., and Julia Huseman (Elsen). His father was an attorney and his mother taught school. He served in the U.S. Army in the 752nd Tank
Full Name: Elderkin, George Wicker
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1879
Date Died: 19 December 1965
Place Born: Chicago, Cook, IL, USA
Place Died: Venice, Sarasota, FL, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), and Classical
Career(s): art historians
Institution(s): Princeton University
Classicist art history professor and archaeologist. Elderkin was born in Chicago in 1879. He graduated from Darthmouth in 1902 continuing to graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. His Ph.D., was granted from Hopkins in 1906 with a dissertation topic of speech in Greek epics. He joined Princeton University in 1910, part of the founding nucleus of the University’s Art and Archaeology department being developed by Charles Rufus Morey. His first book, Problems In Periclean Buildings. was published by the University in 1912; a second work, Kantharos: Studies In Dionysiac And Kindred Cult, appeared in 1924. Morey had begun excavations at Antioch, a Hellenistic city in modern-day Turkey, starting in 1928. Elderkin oversaw the fieldwork of Antioch that began on March 4, 1932. He was there on behalf of Princeton; however several other institutions were stakeholders in the project including Musées de France, Worcester Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Fogg Museum of Art. It was Elderkin’s intention to devote the second half of the next five academic school years to the excavation. In 1934 the Corinth Museum was opened and Elderkin was one of the initial directors of the educational work at the museum. He was elected a corresponding member of the Deutsche Archäologische Institut in 1936. He began teaching at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 1938 and continued to do so for the next four years. The excavations in Antioch officially ended in September of 1939 with the declaration of war in Europe. Notable discoveries in Antioch made by Elderkin from the excavation included a mosaic floor showing Dionysus, Hermes, Athena, Aphrodite, and other Greek deities. The imagery on the mosaics included landscapes and hunting scenes bordered by a pictorial atlas of Daphne. He later published a book on the excavation titled Antioch on the Orontes. Because of his work on Antioch Elderkin was named vice president of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1942.
His graduate courses at Princeton included; Etruscan Art, Olympia, Delphia, and Epidaurus, Greek Archaeology, Greek Vase Painting, Greek Archaeology, and Art Commentary on Greek Literature. In 1948 he retired from Princeton as a professor emeritus after reaching the statutory age limit of 68 enforced by the university.
In 1954 he joined a public religious controversy at the University, publishing The Roman Catholic Problem in response to objections by Princeton’s Catholic chaplain, Reverend Hugh Halton (1913-1979.) Elderkin described the book as a “challenge to the authoritarianism of the Vatican” and criticized the Catholic church’s hold on Princeton. Halton’s response claimed Elderkin’s piece was blasphemous and questioned Elderkin’s academic integrity. This, in addition to similar unpleasant critiques of Princeton’s religion department staff, caused Halton to be removed from Princeton’s faculty.
Two portraits were donated to the Princeton University Art Museum in Elderkin’s name by his daughter; a German Portrait of a Young Man was donated in 1968 and a Dutch portrait from 1542 was donated in 1992.
Elderkin’s work, Problems in Periclean Buildings, was credited with shining a new light on the potential architectural workings of the Propylea and the Caryatid Porch of the Erectheum. In Golgotha, Kraneion, and the Holy Sepulchre he also applied a unique architectural perspective on pre-Christian sites which was previously missing from the work’s analysis. Elderkin was considered an expert on Greek religions and mystic cults, this is particularly evident in his work Kantharos. Elderkin’s book focused on the study of religion in the ancient world and its connections to other religious narratives. He analyzed the iconography of Greek and Roman gods and explained the evolution of these symbolic meanings through time. In addition to his personal writings, he also brought a variety of subjects to his students at Princeton. He was reported to be “informative, sensitive, and generally satisfying to students”(Smyth and Lukehart). The junior courses Elderkin provided are the following; Minoan and Mycenean Painting, Minoan and Mycenean Metal Work, Vase Paintings with Scenes from Epic Stories, The Works of Praxiteles, Types of Greek Coins, and the Comparative Study of Greek and Roman Portraits. Elderkin, in collaboration with Morey, is credited with teaching the first course at Princeton focusing on Classical Numismatics.(Lavin). This course was particularly innovative because it worked in collaboration with Princeton’s museum collection, an opportunity that previously had not been offered.
Contributors: Caitlin Childers
Classicist art history professor and archaeologist. Elderkin was born in Chicago in 1879. He graduated from Darthmouth in 1902 continuing to graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. His Ph.D., was granted from Hopkins in 1906 with a dissertation
