Art Historians

Dilke, Emilia Francis Strong, Lady

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Dilke, Emilia Francis Strong, Lady

Other Names:

Lady Dilke
Emilia Francis Strong
Emilia Francis Strong Pattison
Francis Pattison
Mrs. Mark Pattison
Emilia Francis Strong Dilke

Gender: female

Date Born: 02 September 1840

Date Died: 1904

Place Born: Ilfracombe, Devon, England, UK

Place Died: Pyrford, Surrey, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style)

Career(s): art critics, art historians, and authors

Overview

British amateur author and art historian, popular writer on art, particularly French art. Emilia Francis Strong was the daughter of Henry Strong, a bank manager and amateur painter and Emily Weedon (Strong). Her father knew the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896). Strong grew up in affluence and religious devotion; throughout her life she experienced religious hallucinations. Until she was forty-five, she used her middle and gender-ambiguous name “Francis.” Educated by a capable governess, Strong moved to London at eighteen to study painting at the South Kensington School of Art. There she met the man who would become her second husband, Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911), three years her junior, also an art student. In London she met the writer George Eliot, and another Pre-Raphaelite painter, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). She married Mark Pattison 1n1861, twenty-seven years older than she and a Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Dour but with a predilection for German intellectualism, he introduced his wife to the work of the cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt and the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Among her friends at Oxford was Walter Pater. Her exposure to this more rigorous brand of scholarship perhaps accounts for her distance from the typical British sentimental art writing of, for example, John Ruskin.

Her husband treated their marriage as little more than one more student to train, and Pattison-Strong rebelled by publishing thinly disguised Arthurian-style legends of her unhappiness with Oxford and Pattison. Pattison-Strong embraced social concerns, as did many artists and art-writers of her time. She supported women’s suffrage from the 1870s, and along with the artist William Morris (1834-1896) and Ruskin, espousing technical education for women.

In 1875 Pattison-Strong renewed her acquaintance with Charles Dilke, and possibly may have had an affair with the notorious philandering Dilke (Eisler). She took up writing art criticism for The Portfolio and The Academy in 1870, becoming the latter’s art editor in 1873. She reviewed the Paris Salons, positively remarking on the included paintings of Manet and Courbet. Casting about for assistance in publishing a book on the drawings of Etienne Delaune (1518-1583), she made the acquaintance of the art historian Eugène Müntz, director of the Bibliothèque de l’école des Beaux-Arts. Müntz was enthusiastic about her capabilities and the two remained friends their whole lives, though the work was never completed.

In 1879 she published her first work of art history, The Renaissance of Art in France. Its numerous foreign quotations and reliance on the reader’s knowledge of art history did not make it a popular success. Her next publication, a French-language monograph on Claude Lorrain, was part of the prestigious Bibliothèque Internationale de l’Art series. The Claude book included documents discovered by Pattison-Strong and the style, perhaps because it was not her first language, was spare and readable. Her marriage to Pattison ever in decline, she devoted her efforts on her most original work, Art in the Modern State. Although not published until 1888, the work examined the patronage of all the arts in seventeenth-century France. Anticipating later twentieth-century studies of guild and academy competitions, her work made heavy use of archival material. The book’s few illustrations and her unmasked dislike for the art that period covered probably factored in its meager sales.

Mark Pattison died in 1884, but not before causing his wife’s mental collapse for which she took ample injections of morphine. Now a financially independent widow, Pattison-Strong was free to marry Dilke, whose first wife had died in childbirth. Charles Dilke had switched careers from art to politics and was a leader in the radical wing of the Liberal party. They married in 1885; Strong reverted to her first name to “Emilia.” As Lady Dilke, she continued to champion Labour politics along with her husband. Political disappointment erupted for Charles, who was poised for election to Prime Minister, when politically-motivated trials exposed his numerous liaisons.

Lady Dilke received the acknowledgement for her art history late in her life. In 1897 she was asked to write the preface to the Wallace Collection catalog, perhaps the finest private donation of French art to Britain. In 1899 she began to publish her comprehensive series on the art of the eighteenth century, French Painters, as the first title. Architects and Sculptors appeared in 1900, French Furniture and Decoration in 1901, and French Engravers and Draughtsmen in 1902. In Paris, she assisted in 1902 organizing an important 1904 exhibition of French art. After her death, her personal art library went to the British Museum (then known as the South Kensington Museum) library. Dilke’s personal papers were donated to the Bibliothèque de l’école des Beaux-Arts in honor of her friendship with Müntz.

As an art historian, Dilke is remarkable for her even treatment of the arts in her scholarship. She approaches the decorative arts and sculpture equally with painting, something her contemporaries, even the Goncourts did not. Her writing, Colin T. Eisler observed, focuses on the facts of the object and not her emotional appreciation of it. Dilke was preceded in her gender by women like Anna Jameson but remains among the first women art historians and the very earliest to be concerned with primary source material as a component of art history.

At her death, her body was the first ever to be cremated in England, which had only recently been made legal (Garnett)

Selected Bibliography

The Renaissance of Art in France. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879; Claude Lorrain: sa vie et ses œuvres. Paris, J. Rouam, 1884. preface by. Bulley, A. Amy, and Whitley, Margaret. Women’s Work. Social Questions of To-day 13. London: Methuen, 1894; French Painters of the XVIIIth Century. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1899; French Architects and Sculptors of the XVIIIth Century. London, G. Bell and Sons, 1900; French Furniture and Decoration in the XVIIIth Century. London, G. Bell and sons, 1901; French Engravers and Draughtsmen of the XVIIIth Century. G. Bell and Sons, 1902.

Sources

Dilke, Charles W. “Emilia Dilke.” introduction to, Dilke, Emilia Strong. The Book of Spiritual Life. London: J. Murray, 1905; Askwith, Betty. Lady Dilke: a Biography. London, Chatto & Windus, 1969; Eisler, Colin. “Lady Dilke (1840-1904): The Six Lives of an Art Historian.” in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979. Sherman, Claire Richter and Holcomb, Adele M., eds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. 147-180; Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement 1901-1911, pp. 507-8; Dictionary of Art 8: 895-6; Israel, Kali. Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Garnett, Henrietta. Wives and Stunners: the Pre-Raphaelites and their Muses. London: Macmillan, 2012, p. 193, note [2].

Diez, Ernst

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Diez, Ernst

Other Names:

Ernst Diez

Gender: male

Date Born: 1878

Date Died: 1961

Place Born: Lölling, Austria

Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

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

Overview

Byzantinist, Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski student and professor at Bryn Mawr College, 1939-1943. 1919 Lecturer, University of Vienna; 1926-1939 professor at Bryn Mawr; 1939-1943 returned to Vienna; Associate Professor, 1943-1949 first professor of art history in Ankara. Together with Curt Glaser and Ernst Grosse, Diez established the theoretic foundation for Asian art in the German-speaking world (Metzler).

Selected Bibliography

and Otto Demus. Byzantine Mosaics in Greece, Hosios Lucas and Daphni. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 23, 50 mentioned; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999, pp. 59-61.

Dieulafoy, Marcel

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Dieulafoy, Marcel

Gender: male

Date Born: 1844

Date Died: 1920

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Iranian, Middle Eastern, and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): École Polytechnique

Overview

Early research into the Iranian origins of vault construction

Selected Bibliography

L’Art antique de la Perse. Paris, Librairie centrale d’architecture, 1884-1885.

Sources

Bazin 168

Diepolder, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Diepolder, Hans

Gender: male

Date Born: 1896

Date Died: 1969

Place Born: Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical

Overview

Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly vase painting. Diepolder was first a student and collaborator with Ernst Buschor in Munich. He was the Assistant (1925-1937) and then Director (1937-19??) of the antiquities collection at the Munich Museum. In 1936 he authored the volume on the Penthesilea painter for Bilder griechischer Vasen series edited by J. D. Beazley and Paul Jacobsthal. Named Honorary Professor at Munich University in 1946. When the Museum reopened with a small exhibition space after the war, Diepolder ensured that the first works displayed were works of classical Greek sculpture. His Munich classes inspired many later art historians including George M. A. Hanfmann.

Selected Bibliography

Untersuchungen zur Komposition der römisch-campanischen Wandgemälde, in: RM 41, 1926, 1ff.; Die attischen Grabreliefs der 5. und 4. Jhs. 1931; Der Penthesilea-Maler. Bilder griechischer Vasen 10. Berlin: H. Keller, 1936.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 270-271.

Diehl, Gaston

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Diehl, Gaston

Gender: male

Date Born: 1912

Date Died: 1999

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

Home Country/ies: France

Career(s): art critics

Overview

Professor of art history and art critic. Diehl graduated from the Institut d’art et d’archéologie in 1934. In1935 he founded a group called “Regain” to discuss emerging art and artists. Later the same year, a magazine with the same name was launched. He received an additional degree from the école du Louvre in 1936. He began writing a column, “La Tribune des jeunes” in the weekly magazine Marianne in 1938 and launched the magazine Charpentes in 1939. Despite the German occupation of Paris, Diehl founded the “May Show” in 1943, whose art opposed the ideology of Nazism. He wrote an introduction to a folio edition of art reproductions, Les Fauves. In 1944 he helped for the “Friends of Art” group for the diffusion of the modern art through conferences and films. The May Show sponsored “Living Room” exhibitions beginning in 1945, the first situated at the gallery Pierre Maurs. This liberation show had honorary contributors Germain Bazin, Jacques Dupont, Rene Huyghe, Bernard Dorival, Michel Florisoone, Pierre Ladoué and Marc Thiboutet. the catalog of which was written by Diehl. Diehl remained president of the organization until 1997. After the war, Diehl was part of the launching of the “International Film Festival of Art” in 1948. The film board produces films on Van Gogh, 1948, and Gauguin, 1950, with Alain Resnais Watteau, 1950, with Jean Aurel. He accepted an appointment as cultural attaché to the French Embassy in Venezuela in 1950 where he directed the French-Venezuelan [art] Institute (l’Institut franco-vénézuélien) in Caracas. He taught art history at the Central University and the école des Beaux-Arts in Caracas during the same years. In 1959 he moved to Morocco teaching there as well. He returned to Paris in 1966, recalled by minister of culture André Malraux to direct the Office of exhibitions (l’Action Artistique), Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He organized foreign exhibitions at the Grand and Petit Palais and the Louvre, notably the blockbuster show “Le Trésor de Toutankamon,” 1966. He retired in 1977. Diehl was elected president of the Museum of Latin America in 1983. He worked with the la Maison de l’Amérique Latine in Monte Carlo between 1986 and 1989. One of his final acts as an art historian was to curate the joint show for Italy and France, “Mystérieuse légende de l’Ecole de Paris à Montparnasse,” (Mysterious legend of the Paris School in Montparnasse).

Selected Bibliography

Les problèmes de la peinture. Paris: Confluences, 1945; introduction, Les Fauves: oeuvres de Braque, Derain, Dufy, Friesz, Marquet, Matisse, Van Dongen, Vlaminck. Paris: éditions du Chêne, 1943; and Humbert, Agnès. Henri Matisse. Paris: P. Tisné, 1954; La peinture moderne dans le monde. English, The moderns; a treasury of painting throughout the world. New York: Crown Publishers 1961; History of modern painting. New York, Hyperion Press/Macmillan 1951; La leggenda misteriosa della Scuola di Parigi a Montparnasse: una esposizione. Milan: UTET periodici, 1994.

Sources

Roissard, Pierre. Personnalités de France. Grenoble: P. Roissard, 1986; Diccionario biográfico de las artes plásticas en Venezuela, siglos XIX y XX. Caracas: Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes, 1973.

Diehl, Charles

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Diehl, Charles

Other Names:

Michel Charles Diehl

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 July 1859

Date Died: 01 November 1944

Place Born: Strasbourg, Grand Est, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

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

Overview

Byzantinist and archaeologist; founder of French academic byzantinologie. Diehl’s father was Frédéric Geoffroy Diehl (1804-1868), a professor of German at the lycée in Strasbourg. The younger Diehl studied at the lycées of Strasbourg and Nancy, graduated from the Louis-le-Grand lycée. He received further degrees from the École normale supérieure in 1878, licencié in 1879, and the agrégé d’histoire in 1881. He spent the following years first in Rome as a member of the École Française de Rome, 1881-1882 and then in Athens, a member of the École Française d’Athènes, 1883-1885. That year, 1885, he began teaching in a faculty position at Nancy. He received his Ph.D. in 1888 writing his dissertation on Byzantine history, still relatively novel among French dissertations [Alfred Rambaud (1842-1905) being his only predecessor with an 1870 thesis] (Boer). The same year he married Marguerite de Langenhagen (b. 1868), daughter of a physician. Unlike most new French academics, Diehl was spared time teaching secondary education and directly offered an appointment as professor of archaeology at the university in Nancy. An 1889 book on the convent of Saint-Luc en Phocide included mosaics, his first foray into art writing. Beginning in 1892 he joined archaeological excavations in North Africa. The first of his art history was issued in 1894 as L’art byzantin dans l’Italie méridionale. L’Afrique byzantine: Histoire de la domination byzantine en Afrique (533-709), the result of his archaeological digs, appeared in 1896. In 1899 he moved to the University of Paris where a lectureship in Byzantine history was made for him, another highly unusual move for a French academic situation. His work on Justinian and Byzantine civilization of the sixth century was published in 1901. His titles in art history stem from this later time, including Figures byzantines, 1906. He was made full professor in 1907. His Histoire de l’Empire byzantin was translated into English as a standard text of the era. Other art books included Manuel d’art byzantin, 1925-1926, L’art chrétien primitif et l’art byzantin, 1928, part of a series Bibliothèque d’histoire de l’art edited by Auguste Marguillier, and La peinture byzantine, 1933. He retired in 1934 as increasing blindness set in. Before Diehl, France was not represented in Byzantine scholarship, a field dominated by the Germans (Boer). He was among the emerging specialists in the redefining period of the French academic system of the nineteenth century. Though known generally for his books on Byzantine history, his contribution to art history was voluminous, though not widely accepted by Byzantinist art historians of the time. He was criticized for not incorporating the latest scholarship or ignoring it from German and English-speaking scholars (Burlington Magazine). His books featured liberal documentation and a readable writing style.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Études sur l’administration byzantine dans l’exarchat de Ravenne (568-751). Paris, 1888, published, Paris: E. Thorin, 1888; Études d’archéologie byzantine. L’église et les mosaïques du couvent de Saint-Luc en Phocide. Paris: E. Thorin, 1889; L’art byzantin dans l’Italie méridionale. 1894; Figures byzantines. Paris: Armand Colin, 1906, English, Byzantine Portraits. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1927; Histoire de l’Empire byzantin. Paris: A. Picard, 1919, English, History of the Byzantine Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925; Manuel d’art byzantin. Paris: A. Pickard, 1925-1926; L’art chrétien primitif et l’art byzantin. Paris: G. van Oest, 1928; Ravenne. Paris: Librairie Renouard, H. Laurens, 1928; La peinture byzantine. Paris: G. van Oest, 1933.

Sources

E. B. “[review of] L’Art Chrétien primitif et L’Art Byzantin.” Burlington Magazine 53, no. 305 (August 1928): 102; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 171; Charle, Christophe. Dictionnaire biographique des universitaires aux XIXe et XXe siècles. 1. Les professeurs de la faculté des lettres de Paris. Paris: Institut national de recherches pédagogiques: Éditions du CNRS, 1985, pp. 62-63; Boer, Pim den. History as a Profession: the Study of History in France, 1818-1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 248, 269-271; Behn, Wolfgang. Concise Biographical Companion to Index Islamicus: an International Who’s Who in Islamic Studies from its Beginnings down to the Twentieth Century. Boston: Brill, 2004-2006; [obiturary:] Byzantion 17 (1944/1945): 414-416.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Byzantinist and archaeologist; founder of French academic byzantinologie. Diehl’s father was Frédéric Geoffroy Diehl (1804-1868), a professor of German at the lycée in Strasbourg. The younger Diehl studied at the lycées of Strasbourg and

Didron, Adolphe Napoléon

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Didron, Adolphe Napoléon

Other Names:

Adolphe Napoléon Didron

Gender: male

Date Born: 1806

Date Died: 1867

Place Born: Hautvillers, Grand Est, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): archaeology, iconography, preservation (function), preserving, and protection (maintenance function)

Career(s): preservationists

Overview

Iconographer, archaeologist and preservationist. Didron initially studied for the church at the seminaries at Meaux and Rheims. In 1826 he moved to Paris in order to study Greek and Latin, working as a teacher. In Paris he met Victor Hugo (1805-1885) in 1831 who encouraged him to study the medieval buildings of Normandy. Didron became fascinated with archaeological method for the middle ages, a discipline developing in France since the establishment of the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France in 1814. The 1830 July Monarchy launched a number of organizations to document French heritage. One group, the Comité historique des Arts et Monuments (Historical Commission of Arts and Buildings), was formed to widen medieval archaeology beyond merely descriptive to include interpretation of the figurative arts. Didron was appointed the Secretary of the Comité by the French Interior Minister François Guizot (1787-1874). His archaeological findings were issued beginning in 1835 (through 1852) in the periodical Bulletin Archéologique. He also lectured on Christian iconography at the Bibliotheque Royale. He traveled to Greece in 1839 in order to compare medieval art and manuscripts of the East with the West.Didron was an exponent of the French Gothic Revival style, particularly the13th-century, which he considered the consummate Christian art. He, Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval and Jean-Baptiste Lassus issued their nine-volume documentation on Chartres cathedral, Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres beginning in 1842. In 1843 he published his Iconographie chrétienne: Histoire de Dieu, a major iconographic study of the middle ages. Didron’s book became a model for the interpretation of medieval art as envisioned by the Comité. Didron also edited and founded the important Annales Archéologiques in 1844. Didron established a bookshop in 1845 which allowed him to mount several large publishing ventures (as the Librairie arche´ologique de Didron), one of which was his translation of an iconographical manuscript by Dionysios of Fourna (c.1670-c. 1745). Following his interested in Gothicism, he started a factory specializing in revival stained glass in 1849 and in 1858 a second factory producing Gothic-style religious fittings. His son, E´douard Amede´e Didron (1836-1902) also became an art writer (leaving his father with the appellation “Didron aîné” in later years) and assuming editing of the Annales Archéologiques at his father’s death in 1867 (to 1872). Didron worked for the dual goals of reviving contemporary architecture and its concomitant arts by using archaeological findings. His work, like Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin in England and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in France (whom he published in his Annales Archéologiques in 1846), raised an appreciation of medieval architecture and the heritage of the middles ages in general. Didron’s efforts resulted–unlike Viollet-le-Duc–in the lessening of excessive architectural restoration. Other art was saved from outright demolition through his efforts. His espousal of a new architecture based upon an accurate study past, however, was less successful. French decorative art and religious painting reflected few, if any, of his ideals. As a scholar, his research was primarily iconographic. He instituted a specialized vocabulary which addressed his careful attention to evidence, accompanied by his excellent published illustrations. Other iconographers, such as the Jesuit priest-team of Charles Cahier and Arthur Martin (1801-1856), though less stylistically sensitive, and the Abbé Augustin-Joseph Crosnier, built the study of medieval iconography into a science, ultimately laying the foundations for the work of Émile Mâle. In retrospect, Didron as one of the most original medievalists of the time (Leniaud, Dictionary of Art).

Selected Bibliography

and Dupasquier, Louis. Monographie de Notre-Dame de Brou. Lyon: Imprimerie de Dumoulin, Ronet et Sibuet, 1842; and Amaury-Duval, Eugène Emmanuel, and Lassus, Jean-Baptiste. Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres 9 vols of 72 plates. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1842-1865; Iconographie chrétienne: Histoire de Dieu. Paris: Imprimerie royal, 1843, English, Christian Iconography: The History of Christian Art. 2 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851-1886; [Introduction and notes]. Dionysios of Fourna. Manuel d’iconographie chre´tienne, grecque et latine. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1845; Manuel des oeuvres de bronze et d’orfèvrerie du moyen âge. Paris: Didron, 1859; Iconographie de l’opéra. Paris: Didron, 1864.

Sources

Dvorák, Max. Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967, pp. 190-1; 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. 60 mentioned; Leniaud, Jean-Michel. “Didron, Adolphe-Napoléon.” Dictionary of Art; Brisac, Catherine and Leniaud, Jean-Michel. “Adolphe-Napoleon Didron ou les media au service de l’art chretien.” Revue de l’Art 77 (1987): 33-42; Nayrolles, Jean. “Deux approches de l’iconographie medievale dans les annees 1840.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 128 (November 1996): 201-22.

Dickins, Guy

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Dickins, Guy

Gender: male

Date Born: 1881

Date Died: 1916

Place Died: Pozières, Hauts-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Overview

Classical scholar of Greek sculpture. Dickins initially considered going into the British civil service in India before turning to classical studies at Oxford University. In 1904 he was sent to the British School in Athens as a Craven Fellow. He was chief excavator of the ancient city of Thalamae (modern Thalmes) as part of their Lakonia Survey in 1904 under Richard McGillivray Dawkins (1871-1955), director of the School. He helped excavate the temple of Artemis Orthia in Sparta. He was assisted by, among others, the School’s librarian and later an eminent Oxford ancient scholar, Marcus Tod (1878-1974). Dickins published his findings in the Annual of the British School at Athens for 1905. He married Mary Hamilton, an Oxford scholar also working at the British School. He returned to England in 1909 to accept an appointment as a Fellow at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he lectured in ancient history. In 1912 the British School in Athens published a catalog of the Acropolis Museum at request of the Greek archaeological authorities. Dickins wrote the work with Stanley Casson and the archaeologist Dorothy Lamb Brooke, Lady Nicholson (1887-1967). He became a University Lecturer in Classical Archaeology in 1914, but before he could begin, Dickins joined the (British) army during World War I where he was commissioned as a captain placed in charge of a unit of the King’s Royal Rifles Corps. He was shot and killed in Pozières, France, while assisting two wounded soldiers during the battle of the Somme. Dickins had collected material for a history of Greek art he hoped to write. At his death, his widow posthumously published it as Hellenistic Sculpture, 1920. His widow later married the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Classical Art, Lacey D. Caskey.Some sense of the broader work on classical sculpture Dickins envisioned may be gleaned in his 1908 article for the Burlington Magazine. Dickins clearly envisioned his book to be a work of art history, as evidenced by his publishing in an art journal, unlike much of classical scholarship at the time which confined their publications to strictly archaeological organs.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Published Works of the Author.” in, Dickins, Guy. Hellenistic Sculpture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, pp. 89-94; and Casson, Stanley, and Nicholson, Dorothy Lamb Brooke. Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press/Acropolis Museum, 1912-1921; Hellenistic sculpture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920; “The Art of Sparta.” Burlington Magazine 14 no. 68 (November 1908): 64-84.

Sources

Gardner, Percy. “Preface.” Dickins, Guy. Hellenistic Sculpture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, pp. vii-ix; [obituary:] Bates, William N. “Necrology.” American Journal of Archaeology 21 no. 1 (January 1917): 92.

Díaz del Valle, Lázaro

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Díaz del Valle, Lázaro

Other Names:

Lázaro Díez del Valle

Gender: male

Date Born: 1606

Date Died: 1669

Place Born: León, Castile-Leon, Spain

Place Died: Madrid, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Spanish (culture or style)

Overview

Author of an early biography of Spanish artists. Díaz del Valle was a singer and court personage in the Capilla Real and Chaplain to Charles II of Spain. There he met many of the court painters, including Diego Velázquez, Sebastián de Herrera Barnuevo, Pedro de la Torre and Juan Escalante. His avocation was writing, though his works remained in manuscript. He wrote a three-volume history, Noticia histórica del principio de la Inquisición y la historia y nobleza del Reino de León y Principado de Asturias. Philip II commissioned him to translate the Italian art-historical biographies of Giorgio Vasari, to which Díaz del Valle included biographies of Madrid painters. Beginning in 1656 his art writings, unsystematic accumulations of notes cribbed from other treatises and biographies, were assembled as Varones ilustres with a second volume in 1659. The model for this was the esthetic writing of Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos (fl. 1600) and Juan Alonso de Butrón (fl. 1630). Díaz del Valle’s biographies of artists provided much material for later Spanish art historiographers. The writer and proto-art historian Acisclo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco and Juan Agustin Ceán Bermudez both used his writings for their own more significant artistic biographies.

Selected Bibliography

Noticia histórica del principio de la Inquisición y la historia y nobleza del Reino de León y Principado de Asturias (manuscript, vol. 1 destroyed in 1939; vol. 2 whereabouts unknown; vol. 3, London, British Library); Varones ilustres. 2 vols. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Diego Velázquez, 1656, 1659.

Sources

Castrillón, Juan L. “D. Lazaro Díaz del Valle y de la Puerta.” Boletín de la Academia de la historia 12 (1888): 471-479; Gaya Nuño, Juan Antonio. Historia de la crítica de arte en España. Madrid: Ibérico Europea de Ediciones, 1975; Jacobs, Michael. “Introduction.” Lives of Velázquez. London: Pallas Athene, 2006, p. 21.

Dhanens, Elisabeth

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Dhanens, Elisabeth

Gender: female

Date Born: 1915

Place Born: Eeklo, East Flanders, Flanders, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Overview

Specialist in Early Netherlandish Painting; inspector of the Art Patrimony of the province of East Flanders. Elisabeth Dhanens studied art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde of the Ghent Rijksuniversiteit (State University). In 1945, she obtained her doctor’s degree with a monograph on the artist and designer Jan van Roome, who worked in the first quarter of the sixteenth century in the Southern Netherlands. This study, supervised by professor Domien Roggen, was published in Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis, 11 (1945-1948). Between 1945 and 1952, she held a research position at the Brussels documentation center and central laboratory, ACL (since 1957 known as the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium’s Artistic Heritage). Between 1952 and 1976, she served as inspector for the Art Patrimony in the province of East Flanders. In the early fifties she prepared a critical and analytical study of the Flemish sculptor Jean Boulogne, or Giovanni Bologna Fiammingo, partly based on fieldwork in Italy. For this monograph she received an award from the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België (Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts), which published it in 1956. A year later, a Fulbright research scholarship gave her the opportunity to work in the United States. In her capacity as provincial inspector she published the first eight volumes of a series of inventories of churches, cities and villages in East Flanders, Inventaris van het kunstpatrimonium van Oost-Vlaanderen. She also set up the inventory of the church of Our Lady in Ninove (vol. 11), which was completed after her retirement by Walter Lerouge and Rosa van den Abeele-Bellon, and published in 1980. The inventories of the St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent (vol. 5) and of the Ghent Altarpiece in this church (vol. 6), both published in 1965, were the first products of Dhanens’ longstanding interest and scholarly work on Hubert and Jan van Eyck. With her study on the Ghent Altarpiece, she intended to undo this work from erroneous interpretations and mystifications, while her examination of the relevant written sources helped her to situate it in its original context. In 1973 she was one of the few non-English-speaking scholars to write a volume for the innovative Art in Context series, Van Eyck: The Ghent Altarpiece. This contribution was a follow up to Dhanens’ earlier work on this painting, particularly her 1965 publication, while in a separate chapter she for the first time dealt with the commentaries of the twelfth-century theologian Rupert of Deutz as an important iconographical source of the altarpiece. In the 1970s and 1980s, Dhanens published several other studies related to the Ghent Altarpiece and Jan van Eyck in the Mededelingen series of the Fine Arts Division of the Royal Flemish Academy. Her monograph on Hubert and Jan van Eyck appeared in 1980. Five important articles, published in 1984 under the title: Tussen de Van Eycks en Hugo van der Goes dealt with the artistic activity in Ghent between 1432 and ca 1465. Based on historical, iconological, and stylistic research, Dhanens concluded that the Ghent Altarpiece influenced a number of painters in and around Ghent in this period. She also suggested that several paintings traditionally attributed to the so-called Master of Flemalle should rather be seen as the work of different artists, emulating the Van Eyck style. Hugo van der Goes was the subject of her 1998 monograph, Hugo van der Goes. In a 1989 article, De Bewening van Christus voor het open Graf, een vroeg werk van Hans Memling, she identified the Entombment (Uffizi, Florence), since 1823 attributed to Rogier van Weyden, as an altarpiece by Hans Memling who, according to Giorgio Vasari and Guicciardini (1483-1540), painted this work for the Medici chapel in the Villa Careggi. The traditional attribution of the Uffizi Entombment to Rogier van der Weyden, however, still prevails in recent literature. In 1995, the Royal Flemish Academy published Dhanens’ study on Rogier van der Weyden, Rogier van der Weyden. Revisie van de documenten. Revising the written sources up to 1800, Dhanens aimed at understanding these texts in their proper historical contexts. In 1973, Dhanens was elected to the Koninklijke Academie van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was a member of the board of the Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, a publication of the Koninklijke Academiën van België. She served as the editor of the 1981 volume, to which she contributed biographies of Hubert and Jan van Eyck as well as of their brother Lambert and their sister Margareta, both painters. In all her publications on the so-called Flemish Primitives as well as on several sixteenth-century artists, Dhanens aimed at placing works of art in their original historical contexts. Her studies are based on extensive archival research and her conclusions are often new and original. Her monographs on painters appeared in several translations, but most of her articles were published in Dutch only.

Selected Bibliography

[selected bibliography] Relecture des sources. in Dhanens, E., Dijkstra, Jellie and Van Schoute, Roger (ed.) Rogier de Le Pasture-van der Weyden. Introduction à l’œuvre. Relecture des sources. Tournai: La Renaissance du Livre, 1999; Hugo van der Goes. Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1998; Rogier van der Weyden: revisie van de documenten. Brussels: AWLSK, 1995; De Bewening van Christus voor het open Graf, een vroeg werk van Hans Memling. [and five other articles] Academiae Analecta, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. Klasse der Schone Kunsten 50, 2 (1989); Tussen de Van Eycks en Hugo van der Goes. Academiae Analecta 45, 1 ((1984): 1-98; and van den Abeele-Bellon, Rosa, and Lerouge, Walter. De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk te Ninove. Ghent: Bestendige Deputatie van de Provinciale Raad van Oost-Vlaanderen, 1980; Hubert en Jan van Eyck. Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1980; Van Eyck: the Ghent altarpiece. Art in Context (series). New York: Viking Press, 1973. (Published in Japanese in 1978); Kanton Sint-Maria-Horebeke. 2 vols. Ghent: Bestendige Deputatie van de Provinciale Raad van Oost-Vlaanderen, 1971; edited. Kastelen van België. Brussels: Desoer, 1967. Appeared as well in French and English; Sint-Baafskathedraal, Gent. Ghent: Provinciebestuur van Oostvlaanderen, Kunstpatrimonium, 1965; Het retabel van het Lam Gods in de Sint-Baafskathedraal te Gent. Ghent: Bestendige Deputatie van de Provinciale Raad van Oostvlaanderen, 1965; Dendermonde. Ghent: Kunstpatrimonium, 1961; Sint-Niklaaskerk, Gent. Ghent, s.n., 1960; Jean Boulogne/Giovanni Bologna Fiammingo: Douai 1529 – Florence 1608: bijdrage tot de studie van de kunstbetrekkingen tussen het Graafschap Vlaanderen en Italië. Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1956; and Keyser, Paul de, [and others]. Ars folklorica Belgica. 2 vols. Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1949-56; De voormalige parochiekerk van Eeklo. Antwerpen: De Sikkel, 1947; Jan van Roome alias van Brussel, schilder. in Gentse Bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis. 11, (1945-1948): 41-146.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 191, 501.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Specialist in Early Netherlandish Painting; inspector of the Art Patrimony of the province of East Flanders. Elisabeth Dhanens studied art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde of the Ghent Rijksuniversitei

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