Art Historians

Der Nersessian, Sirarpie

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Der Nersessian, Sirarpie

Other Names:

Sirarpie Véronique Der Nersessian

Gender: female

Date Born: 05 September 1896

Date Died: 06 July 1989

Place Born: Istanbul, Turkey

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

Home Country/ies: Armenia

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

Overview

Medevialist scholar of Armenian art. Der Nersessian was born in Constantinople, which is present-day Istanbul, Turkey. Born to an educated Armenian family in Constantinople, Der Nersessian was educated in the Armenian School of the city and the English High School for Girls. Her maternal uncle, Malachia Ormanian (1841-1918) was patriarch of the Armenian church in the Ottoman Turkey and lived with the family. A distinguished theologian and politician (by necessity as representative for Armenian Christians living in the city), he exerted a strong educational and religious influence on her. After the death of her father when she was eighteen (her mother had died when the girl was nine), Der Nersessian fled with her sister and aunt in the midst of World War I (and the Armenian genocide) to Bulgaria and eventually Switzerland in 1915. Despite financial hardships, she graduated from the Collège de Genève in 1917 and studied further at the university in Geneva until 1919. She and her now married sister moved to Paris where Der Nersessian attended the Sorbonne. At the Sorbonne she studied with the historian Francis Dvornik (1883-1975) and the art historian André Grabar, who was her same age. She received a Licencse ès Lettres in 1920 and a Diplôme d’Histoire Supérieure in 1921. Charles Diehl, the Byzantinist, and art historians Gabriel Millet and Henri Focillon were major influences. Millet made her his assistant at the école pratique des hautes ètudes of the University of Paris in 1922. Between 1922-23 she researched the Baberini Psalter at the Vatican Library and the Bristol Psalter at the British Museum. In 1925 she was awarded a Diplôme des Hautes études. She spent 1927 researching the collection of Armenian Mekhitarist congregation of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice, work which would later contribute to her doctoral thesis. Although she had access to the manuscripts, the support material was out of bounds to women because it was housed in the clausura of the Benedictine monastery and she had to rely on novice-assistants. She was appointed Chargée de cours temporaire at the école this same year. In 1929 Millet co-authored one of her first publications. Her work in the photographic collection at the école gained her the attention of the American medievalist art historians Walter W. S. Cook of New York University, Albert M. Friend, Jr., and Charles Rufus Morey at Princeton. They prevailed upon Wellesley College art department chair Myrtilla Avery to hire Der Nersessian for undergraduate courses in Byzantine art. Initially, Der Nersessian taught only second semester in order to devote time to her dissertation, but from 1934 she taught full time. Der Nersessian received her Ph. D. in 1937 writing as her primary thesis, L’illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph (two theses were required for the Doctorat d’état ès Lettres) and a secondary thesis on Armenian illunimated manuscripts of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Both were accepted with the highest Mention très honorable. She succeeded Avery the same year as chair of the Wellesley department of art and director of the Farnsworth Museum. The previous year she had been a visiting lecturer at New York University addressing the Armenian manuscripts at the J. Pierpont Morgan Library. During this time she met Dorothy E. Miner the keeper of manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, with whom she had a long friendship. In 1939 she gave a series of lectures on Byzantine sculpture at Dumbarton Oaks, before it was a center for medieval studies. During World War II she enjoyed the company of many of her European colleagues who now taught at American Universities. In 1944-45 she held a senior fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks and became a full member of the faculty the next year. She was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy in 1947. In 1953 she overcame strong prejudices toward hiring female professors at Harvard to be named Henri Focillon Professor of Art and Archaeology at Dumbarton Oaks. She was deputy director at Dumbarton Oaks 1954-1955 and 1961-1962. She retired in 1963 and returned to Paris. In retirement, Der Nersessian lectured at various European universities, publishing her collected studies as Byzantine and Armenian Studies in 1973. She declined a festschrift in her honor. At her death, her personal library was sent to the Matenadaran in Erevan to assist her native colleagues. She is buried in the cemetery in Viroflay, France. Her work Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century was published posthumously as Dumbarton Oaks Studies 31 in 1993. The Fonds Sirarpie Der Neressian at the Institut de Recherches sur les Miniatures Arméno-Byzantines was created to honor her. Der Neressian’s scholarship is noted for blending together history and art history. Armenia and the Byzantine Empire (1954) begins with chapters completely historical. She also published a complete book of history, The Armenians (1969). Although her work focused on the Byzantine era overall, her devotion to Armenian art in particular was both personal and intellectual. She contrasts her predecessor, Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski with an unwillingness to generalize the genre or move to exaggerations (Garsoïan).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation] L’illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1937; Manuscrits arméniens illustrés des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles de la Bibliothèque des pères Mekhitharistes de Venise. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1936-37; Armenia and the Byzantine Empire: a Brief study of Armenian Art and Civilization. Cambridge, MA:, Harvard University Press, 1945; An Armenian Version of the Homilies on the Harrowing of Hell. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8. Cambridge, MA:, Harvard University Press, 1954; Alexander Alexandrovich Vasiliev, 1867-1953. Cambridge, MA: 1956; Armenian Manuscripts in the Freer Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: 1963; Aght’amar: Church of the Holy Cross. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965; and Dufrenne, Suzy. L’Illustration des psautiers grecs du Moyen-âge. Paris:C. Klincksieck, 1966; The Armenians. London: Thames & Hudson, 1969; Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore: The Trustees, 1973; études byzantines et arméniennes/Byzantine and Armenian Studies. Louvain: Impr. orientaliste, 1973; Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 31. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1993.

Sources

Allen, Jelisaveta Stanojevich. “Sirarpie Der Nersessian: Educator and Scholar in Byzantine and Armenian Art.” in, Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts: 1820-1979. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. 329-56; Garsoïan, Nina G. “Sirarpie Der Nersessian.” Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline. Volume 3: Philosophy and the Arts. Edited by Helen Damico. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 2110. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000, pp. 287-305; “Chronolgie.” in Agémian, Sylvia, ed. Archives Sirapie Der Nersessian. vol 1. Antélias, Lebanon: Catholicossat Arménien de Cilicie, 2003, pp. 11-46.

Déonna, Waldemar

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Déonna, Waldemar

Gender: male

Date Born: 1880

Date Died: 1959

Place Born: Cannes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Place Died: Genève, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Switzerland

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), and archaeology

Overview

Archeologist and scholar of ancient Greek art; Director of the Musée de Genève, 1922-1955. Déonna was the son of Auguste-Henri Déonna (1846-1894), the Swiss vice consul to Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and mother Marie-Augusta Bönecke (Déonna). He married Marie-Edmée Gans. After attending the universities in Geneva and Paris studying archaeology, epigraphy and vase painting, he spent the years 1903-07 at the Ecole française d’archéologie in Athens, traveling extensively in Greece and Turkey and writing his Ph.D. on terracotta sculpture. During his time, he amassed more than 3500 images of classical sites and objects. He knew Wilhelm Dörpfeld. In 1920 he joined the faculty at the university in Geneva, becoming professor of classical archaeology in 1925, a position he would hold until 1955. In 1922 he also became director of the Musée d’art et d’histoire, and the Musée archéologique in Geneva. He founded the periodical Genava in 1932. In 1950 he directed the founding of the Library for art and archaeology (Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie). Methodologically, Déonna contributed to scholarship surrounding the development of form; his morphological comparisons between Greek and Christian medieval art, which appear in Du miracle grec au miracle chrétien (3 vols. 1945-48).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliographie des travaux de Waldemar Deonna, 1904-1956.” Hommages à Waldemar Deonna. Brussels: Latomus, Revue d’études latines, 1957, pp. 2-48; and de Ridder, Andre. L’art en Grece. Paris: Renaissance du Livre, 1924, English, Art in Greece. New York: Knopf, 1927; L’archéologie: sa valeur, ses méthodes. Paris: H. Laurens, 1912; “Peut-on comparer l’art de la Grèce à l’art du Moyen Age?” [brochure]. 1910; “Crab and the Butterfly: a Study in Animal Symbolism.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17 (January 1954): 47-86; “Un relief de Jean Goujon a Geneve?” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 5 no. 2 (December 1929): 357-71; Du miracle grec au miracle chrétien: classiques et primitivistes dans l’art. 3 vols. Basle: Les éditions Birkhæuser, 1945-48; Etudes d’archéolgie et d’art. Geneva: Albert Kündig, 1914; Les “Apollons archaïques:” étude sur le type masculin de la statuaire grecque au VIme siècle avant notre ère. Paris: Libr. Georg & Co., 1909; Recherches, English partial translation, Sypher, Wylie, ed. “Waldemar Deonna: Primitivism and Classicism: The Two Faces of Art History.” Art History: an Anthology of Modern Criticism. New York: Vintage Books, 1963, pp. 27-47; Les lois et les rythmes dans l’art. Paris: E. Flammarion, Year: 1914; Catalogues des sculptures antiques [from the] Musée d’art et d’histoire. Geneva: H. Jarrys, 1923; L’archéologie: sa valeur, ses méthodes. 3 vols. Paris: H. Laurens, 1912.

Sources

“Deonna, Waldemar.” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (online) http://www.dhs.ch/externe/protect/textes/d/D27707; Sypher, Wylie, ed. “Waldemar Deonna: Primitivism and Classicism.” Art History: an Anthology of Modern Criticism. New York: Vintage Books, 1963, pp. 26-47; Waldemar Deonna: un archéologue derrière l’objectif de 1903 à 1939. Geneva: Musées d’Art et d’Histoire, 2000; 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. 123; 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. 84; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 180-181; [obituary:] Picard, C. Revue Archeologique 2 (July 1959): 103-6

Denon, Jean-Dominique Vivant

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Denon, Jean-Dominique Vivant

Other Names:

Vivant-Denon

Gender: male

Date Born: 1747

Date Died: 1825

Place Born: Givry, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): engravings (prints) and French (culture or style)

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

Overview

Minister of Arts under Napoleon, developer and first director of the Louvre Museum; collector and engraver. Denon was born to a provincial noble family. He initially studied law in Paris in 1765, but switched to study painting under Noël Hallé (1711-1781). His first official appointment came as keeper of the collection of gems and medals left to the King by Madame de Pompadour. Beginning in 1772, he worked as an attaché to the French embassies in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Geneva and Naples, making engravings in addition to his diplomatic work. His commissions included those to Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador in Naples. Denon’s connections at the embassies allowed him to assemble paintings and antique sculpture including object from the sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Acting as an agent for Louis XVI, he bought Guercio’s Resurrection of Lazarus. In 1782 he was appointed chargé-d’affaires in Naples. When Denon was discharged from his Naples assignment in 1785, he traveled to Rome securing work engraving paintings. He returned to France briefly in 1787, where he published his Voyage en Sicile in 1788, illustrated with his own drawings on the topic. The same year, Denon moved to Venice, teaching engraving to the wealthy members of Venetian society, documenting them through portraits and remaining safely out of reach of the French Revolution. In 1792 he returned to Paris, under the protection of Jacques-Louis David, a deputy of the National Convention. David exonerated Denon from charges that he fled France. David gave Denon commissions documenting various Revolutionary meetings. Denon also published the erotic engravings, L’Oeuvre priapique in 1793, illustrating the purported sexual mores of Pompeii. Denon joined Napoleon on his Egyptian campaign, accompanying the group of scholars who documented the Emperor’s exploits and acquisitions. His account of these traveling and the sights, partially published in his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, 1802, ushered in the Egyptian revival style in France. That same year Denon was appointed director general of the Imperial Museums, which included the Musée Central des Arts (modern Louvre), the Musée des Monuments Français and the Musée de l’Ecole Française at Versailles. He presided over the French museums when the Musée Central des Arts was renamed the Musée Napoléon. Denon’s main duty as director was to incorporate the looted works of art Napoleon was claiming from the campaigns in Austria, Spain, Italy, Poland and the German states into the Imperial museums. As the director of the Monnaie des Médailles he designed most of the medals commemorating Napoleon’s triumphs. He assigned imperial art commissions to the major artists of the empire, including David, Antoine-Jean Gros, François Gérard, and François Rude. Denon requisitioned paintings from Italian churches and convents that Napoleon had dissolved, adding them to the Louvre in 1811. He was awarded the title Baron of the Empire in 1812. Even after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, Denon refused to returned the artworks stolen for his museums, preferring to resign instead as director of the Musée Napoléon. In his retirement, Denon, surround by his impressive personal art collection, devoted his last years to a history of the art, Monuments des arts, which was posthumously published by his nephews in 1829. After his death, the collection was dispersed in auctions between 1826-1827. Denon’s collecting activities included 520 Etruscan vases which were later acquired by Louis XVI (in Denon’s lifetime), more than 200 paintings by artists including Watteau, Fra Angelico, Memling and Raphael; Greek, Roman, Gallo-Roman, Egyptian and Oriental antiquities and oceanic and pre-Columbian works. He is buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery, commemorated by a bronze funerary monument by Pierre Cartellier. Denon’s fame rests not with the history of art he wrote, but rather his ability to create the first comprehensive public museum arranging art by schools and periods. Such museums had been theorized in the late eighteenth century and attempted with some degree of success Christian von Mechel (q.v.) in Vienna and others. Denon’s museum launched the 19th century’s quest for edifying, public museums which would result in the acquisition frenzies of national museums throughout Europe, such as Wilhelm Bode in Berlin. Denon achieved the appellation “the Eyes of Napoleon”. He was one of the first to develop a collection of the so-called “Italian primitives” outside Italy.

Selected Bibliography

Voyage en Sicile. Paris: Didot,1788, [new ed.] Paris: Le Promeneur, 1993; Original Journals of the Eighteen Campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte: Comprising all Those in which he Personally Commanded in Chief. London: J. Davis, 1817?; Priapées et sujets divers gravés par Dominique-Vivan Denon. Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1999; Viaggio nel Basso ed Alto Egitto, illustrato dietro alle tracce e ai disegni, del Sig. Denon. 2 vols. Florence: Giuseppe Tofani, 1808; Voyage dans la basse et la haute égypte pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte. 5 vols. Paris: Imprimerie de P. Didot, 1802, English, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte. London: B. Crosby, 1802;and Duval, Amaury. Monuments des arts du dessin chez les peuples tant anciens que modernes. Paris: B. Denon, 1829.

Sources

Lelièvre, Pierre. Vivant Denon: homme des lumières “ministre des arts” de Napoléon. Paris: Picard, 1993; Sollers, Philippe. Le Cavalier du Louvre : Vivant Denon (1747-1825). Paris : Plon, 1995; Capasso, Mario. Come tele di ragno sgualcite: D.-V. Denon e J.-F. Champollion nell’Officina dei papiri ercolanesi. Naples: Eurocomp 2000; Chatelain, Jean. Dominique Vivant Denon et le Louvre de Napoléon. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1973; Ghali, Ibrahim Amin. Vivant Denon, ou, La conquêt du bonheur. Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie orientale du Caire, 1986; J. Nowinski. Baron Dominique Vivant Denon (1747 1825): Hedonist and Scholar in a Period of Transition. Teanek, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970; Barnes, Joanna. “Vivant Denon.” Dictionary of Art; Toso Rodinis, Giuliana. Dominique Vivant Denon: i fiordalisi, il berretto frigio, la sfinge. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1977; Dominique-Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon. Paris: Musée du Louvre/Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999; Gallo, Daniela. Les vies de Dominique-Vivant Denon: actes du colloque organisé au Musée du Louvre. 2 vols. Paris: la Documentation française, 2001; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 62.

Denio, Elizabeth H.

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Denio, Elizabeth Hariett

Other Names:

Elizabeth Harriet Denio

Gender: female

Date Born: 1844

Date Died: 1922

Place Born: Albion, Orleans County, NY, USA

Place Died: Rochester, Monroe, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Baroque

Institution(s): University of Rochester

Overview

One of the first instructors at Wellesley College; first female faculty member at University of Rochester in 1902. Denio was born to John and Celinda (Weatherwax) Denio. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1866. Denio then committed to a brief term as an instructor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New Yrk. Joining Wellesley College in 1876, Denio taught German and Art, classes including, ‘Medieval German Literature,’ In 1883, she created the first inventory of art for the gallery at Wellesley College, the Catalogue of Works of Art Belonging to Wellesley College. Later that year, she took a leave of absence to travel to Leipzig, Berlin, and Heidelberg to study German philology and art history. She gave Wellesley’s first class in art history in 1887. In the 1890’s, Wellesley College was divided into two groups committed to different visions for the college. Denio belonged to an “old guard,” a group loyal to founders Pauline and Henry Durant’s vision, favoring religion and opposed to an elective college format. Ultimately, new president of Wellesley College, Julia Irvine, fired Denio from her position for what she termed her antiquated teaching style. After leaving, she earned her Ph.D., in art history from Heidelberg, writing her thesis on “The Life and Works of Nicolas Poussin,” a complete account on Nicolas Poussin. After returning to the United States, Denio took a position as a lecturer at the University of Rochester in 1902, becoming the first female faculty member. Initially, she was paid by the Watsons, a family involved in the art department and gallery at Rochester, and other community members rather than placed on the permanent payroll. Her instructional materials during this time period largely came from her own personal collections which were later donated upon her retirement. In 1910, she was promoted to the ‘Instructor in the History of Art,’ a permanent position on the university faculty. Denio was a key figure in the founding of the Memorial Art Gallery in 1913. In 1917, upon her retirement from the University of Rochester, Denio was promoted to professor emeritus. While in Rochester, in 1922, Denio was struck and killed by a car. At her death, she left a substantial portion of her estate to the art program at Rochester. She was buried in Albion, New York.

Denio was responsible for establishing art history as a part of the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Rochester.

Selected Bibliography

Nicolas Poussin: His Life and Work. London: S. Low, Marston, 1899; edited, Catalogue of Works of Art Belonging to Wellesley College. Boston: Frank Wood, 1883.

Sources

Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature: A Supplement. British and American authors. Philadelphia: J.B.Lippincott & Co., 1891; Saunders, Susanna Terrell. “Georgiana Goddard King (1871-1939): Educator and Pioneer in Medieval Spanish Art.” in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979. Sherman, Claire Richter and Holcomb, Adele M., eds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, p. 216, mentioned; Palmieri, Patricia Ann. In Adamless Eden: the Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley. Yale University Press, 1997; Lundt, C. M. M. From coeducation to coordinate education and back again: A History of Gender in Undergraduate Education at the University of Rochester, 1900–1961. Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000; County Historian. “Denio Became University of Rochester’s First Female Faculty Member.” Orleans County Department of History, orleanscountyhistorian.org/denio-became-university-of-rochesters-first-female-faculty-member/; “University of Rochester History: Chapter 15, Widening Horizons.” Susan B. Anthony: Celebrating “A Heroic Life” | RBSCP, rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2321.

Contributors: Kerry Rork

Demus, Otto

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

**Image Credit:** Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Full Name: Demus, Otto

Other Names:

Otto Demus

Gender: male

Date Born: 1902

Date Died: 1990

Place Born: Harland, Austria

Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

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

Career(s): educators

Overview

University of Vienna Byzantinist and San Marco scholar. Demus’s father, Carl Demus, was a physician. His father was killed early during the First World War and the younger Demus partially supported of his family as an adolescent. He entered the University of Vienna in 1921 during the time of the historic (and bitter) split between the faculty of Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski, and Julius Alwin von Schlosser. The rivalry between these two men was such that studying with both was impossible. Demus chose Strzygowski but steered clear of the wild “pan-Germanic” theories of his mentor. His Ph.D. was granted under Strzygowski cum laude, in 1928. Demus spent the next years personally photographing (in color, using glass plates) Greek Byzantine monuments. In 1931 this collaborative effort with Ernst Diez appeared as Byzantine Mosaics in Greece, one of the first to employ stylistic analysis to the topic. The work was a prelude to the monument which would occupy Demus most of his life, San Marco in Venice. Demus joined the Austrian monument service as a Konservator (curator) in 1930. Though poorly paid and the division poorly organized, Demus worked hard on the inventory and conservation of the medieval monuments in his charge, which included Maria Saal. In 1935 he issued a small volume on San Marco, which solidified his reputation as a scholar. After six years at the monuments service, Demus moved back to the main office in Vienna and, with Habilitation in hand, joined his alma mater where Hans Sedlmayr had succeeded Schlosser. He continued to hold both positions, teaching art history and advising on conservation. With the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, Demus left, ostensibly for a Byzantine congress in Sicily in 1939, traveling to England for asylum. Demus found employment at the Warburg Library, together with other Austrian and German expatriates. He also lectured at the Courtauld Institute. In 1946 he became president of the office of monuments (Bundesdenkmalamt) in Austria. The following year he issued the slender Byzantine Mosaic Decoration, a synthesis of Byzantine aesthetics and iconography still considered seminal today. The war now concluded and Austria in desperate need of art historians without a recent history of Nazi compliance, Demus was tapped for the newly reorganized Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Office of Monuments). Though still poorly paid, Demus was given a small house in the Belvedere gardens in which he remained for the rest of his life. He shuttled between Dumbarton Oaks, the newly established Byzantine research center under Harvard University, and Vienna. In 1960, his second title on San Marco appeared, a handbook on every aspect except the mosaics. When Karl Maria Swoboda retired from the University, Demus was offered his chair. However, Demus insisted on the earlier bifurcated arrangement, nominating a Schlosser student, Otto Pächt, to be the “other” chair along with his. The enmity between the two camps during their school days had been so strong that Demus had known of Pächt only through subsequent scholarly publications. In 1963 they began their appointments. Demus relinquished the presidency of the Bundesdenkmalamt in 1964, succeed by Walter Frodl. He issued Romanesque Wall Painting in 1968, which, although a coffee-table-style Hirmer Verlag production, was the result of personal and renewed familiarity with the monuments. The same year he also contributed to the summary volume of the Kariye Djami studies of Paul A. Underwood. He delivered the Wrightsman lectures at New York University (Byzantine Art and the West, 1970), a synthetic view of the influence of both cultures on each other. At age 68, Demus secured Dumbarton Oaks funding to clean the mosaics at San Marco, the necessary step in order for him to write the major work on them. In 1984, the results were published as the two-volume Mosaics of San Marco in Venice. In his eighties, Demus published a final book on the Carinthian (Austria) late gothic carved altarpieces. Demus’ students included Irmgard Hutter, who collaborated with him on the Corpus der byzantinischen Miniaturenhandschriften. Hans Belting characterized Demus as one who “obeyed a rigid discipline of scholarship ever since, as a young man, he had to regret the flamboyant lack of responsibility of his teacher, Strzygowski.” Mosaics of San Marco in Venice led to several new findings, the most important of which was that eastern dome was the product of two different ventures, one at 1100 and a second nearly a century later when portions of the first had collapsed.

Selected Bibliography

and Diez, Ernst. Byzantine Mosaics in Greece, Hosios Lucas and Daphni. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931; Die Mosaiken von San Marco in Venedig, 1100-1300. Baden bei Wien: R. M. Rohrer, 1935; Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium. London: 1948; The Mosaics in Norman Sicily. London: Routledge & Paul, 1949; “Die Entstehung des Pälaologenstil in der Malerei,” im Berichte zum XI. Internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongress, (Munich 1958). no. IV, 2 (1960): 1-63; The Church of San Marco in Venice: History, Architecture and Sculpture. Washimgton, DC: 1960; Romanische Wandmalerei. Munich: Hirmer, 1968, English, Romanesque Mural Painting. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1970; Byzantine Art in the West. New York: New York University Press, 1970; and Hutter, Irmgard. Corpus der byzantinischen Miniaturenhandschriften. 5 vols. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1977ff.; and Wolters, Wolfgang. Die Skulpturen von San Marco in Venedig: die figürlichen Skulpturen der Aussenfassaden bis zum 14. Jahrhundert. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1979; The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; and Kessler, Herbert. The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, Venice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988; Die byzantinischen Mosaikikonen. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991.

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. 50, 66; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999, pp. 57-59; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 113-21; [obituary] Belting, Hans. “Otto Demus: 1902-1990.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): vii-xi.

Democritus

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

**Image Credit:** World History Encyclopedia

Full Name: Democritus

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 460 B.C.E.

Date Died: 370 B.C.E.

Home Country/ies: Greece (ancient)

Subject Area(s): ancient, architecture (object genre), Classical, sculpture (visual works), and statues

Career(s): art historians

Overview

Writer whose work, based upon extent fragments, ascribed creative works of art to artists, countering the prevalent view that statues, temples and other works of art were the results of the gods. Democritus further classified and ranked individual artworks, beginning from primitive to complex.

Sources

Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 1.

Demargne, Pierre

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Demargne, Pierre

Other Names:

Pierre Demargne

Gender: male

Date Born: 08 February 1903

Date Died: 13 December 2000

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): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), and archaeology

Overview

French archaeologist and historian of early ancient Greek art. Demargne was the son of archaeologist Pierre Demargne père, a specialist in ancient Crete. He entered the École normale supérieure in 1922, joining the French School of Athens in 1926. His first dig was at Crete on the Minoan site of Mallia (Mália), where the French were excavating one of the great palaces of the age Bronze. There Demargne discovered of one of the most significant pieces of Cretan jewelry, a gold pendant, now in the Museum of Heraklion. On his return from Greece, Demargne was appointed professor of classical archeology at the University of Grenoble in 1933. He moved to a professorship at Strasbourg in 1937. After World War II was declared, Demargne entered the French army in 1939, but was taken prisoner in 1940. He was interned in a prisoner of war camp until the end of the war when he returned to Strasbourg. In 1946 Demargne developed a thesis on the roots of Greek art collecting scholarship on the early artifacts of the Aegean and melding it into a single theory of artistic development. Demargne was elected to the faculty of Sorbonne in 1950. At the Sorbonne he directed research on tenth through the eighth century, B.C., art and archaeology. Demargne turned his attention to Anatolia, Turkey, working at the Institut français d’archéologie d’Istanbul, Institut français d’études anatoliennes. Together with Henri Metzger (1912-2007) and Pierre Coupel (d. 1983), he founded the Archaeological Mission of Xanthos in south-western Turkey. Xanthos had been excavated by the British in 1838 and initial objects conveyed to the British Museum. For the next ten years, Demargne excavated and examined funerary architecture and burial remains of the site. His work became the focus of the eighth international congress of classical archeology (Congrès international d’archéologie classique), which he organized in Paris in 1963. The following year he published a version of his 1947 thesis in the Arts of Mankind series as Birth of Greek Art. The book demonstrates a continuity between the civilizations of the Bronze Age and influences, especially Eastern, in the Aegean. He directed the Archaeological Review between 1966 and 1978, contributing entries to the classical encyclopedia, Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Alterumswissenschaft. During the student riots and take over of Paris universities in 1968 he was part of the dialogue, preventing the destruction of the Sorbonne in 1969. His last book was volume eight of the Fouilles de Xanthos with William A. P. Childs (b. 1942) in 1989.

Selected Bibliography

La Crète dédalique: études sur les origines d’une renaissance. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1947; edited, Fouilles de Xanthos. 12 vols. Paris : Klincksieck, 1958ff., specifically vol. I, with Coupel, Pierre, and Prunet, Pierre. Les piliers funéraires. 1958, vol. 3. with Coupel, Pierre. Les monument des Néréides: l’architecture, 1969, vol. 5, Tombes-maisons, tombes rupestres et sarcophages, 1974, vol. 8. and Childs, William. Le Monument des Néréides: le décor sculpté, 1989; Naissance de l’art grec. Paris: Gallimard 1964, English, The Birth of Greek Art. New York: Golden Press, 1964, British title, Aegean Art: the Origins of Greek Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1964; preface, Le rayonnement des civilisations Grecque et Romaine sur les cultures périphériques. 2 vols. Paris: E. De Boccard, 1965; and Metzger, Henri. Guide to Xanthos/ Xanthos kilavuzu. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1966.

Sources

[obituary:] Le Roy, Christian. “Pierre Demargne, Spécialiste de la Crète et de l’Anatolie antiques.” Le Monde December 20 2000.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

French archaeologist and historian of early ancient Greek art. Demargne was the son of archaeologist Pierre Demargne père, a specialist in ancient Crete. He entered the École normale supérieure in 1922, joining the French School of Athens

Delteil, Loÿs

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Delteil, Loÿs

Other Names:

Loÿs Delteil

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: 1927

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés

Career(s): art dealers

Overview

Etcher and later dealer and cataloger of prints.

Dell, Robert

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

**Image Credit:** the Burliington Magazine IIndex blog

Full Name: Dell, Robert

Other Names:

Robert Edward Dell

Gender: male

Date Born: 1865

Date Died: 1940

Place Died: Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, GermanyNew York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Career(s): art critics, journalists, and publishers

Overview

First editor of the Burlington Magazine 1903-1906; political journalist. Dell was editor of the Connoisseur magazine, a British art journal describing itself as “for collectors.” In 1903 Dell helped found and became first editor of the Burlington Magazine, togehter with the principals, the art historians Bernard Berenson, Herbert P. Horne and Roger Fry. The intent was to produce a British art journal for the serious art scholar, based upon the models of connoisseurship. The magazine, however, lost money and the same year Fry appointed C. J. Holmes as co-editor. Holmes’ experience in publishing and printing put the magazine on secure footing. The quality of the publication which the magazine enjoyed resulted from the “Consultative Committee” Dell put together, whose members included Viscount Dillon (Harold Arthur Lee-Dillon) (1844-1932), cultural MP and art historian David Alexander Edward Lindsay, British Museum director Sir Edward Maunde Thompson (1840-1929), Victoria & Albert Museum director Caspar Purdon Clarke, British Museum Keeper of Prints Sidney Colvin, Harvard art professor Charles Eliot Norton, National Gallery of British Art (“Tate”) director Charles Holroyd, French scholar and Gazette des Beaux-Arts director Salomon Reinach, British Museum Prints and Drawings Keeper Laurence Binyon and Berlin Museums director Wilhelm Bode. Dell hired Edgerton Beck, (d. 1941) a later costume historian, as his assistant. In 1906 Dell resigned in an apparent power struggle with Fry, moving to Paris to be the foreign correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. After World War I he was expelled from the Clemenceau government for articles criticizing France’s attempts at a 1917 peace negotiations with Austria. After the War, he worked for the Nation as a correspondent as well. Dell wrote a book on his experiences with the French, My Second Country, in 1920. His expulsion to France was rescinded in 1926 and he returned briefly. He moved to New York in 1938, residing at the Hotel Brevoort where he died in 1940. Dell and the Burlington Magazine were the center of the squabbles that took place among British authorities of Italian Renaissance. Fry’s usurping of the magazine was in part to consolidate his opinions on Quattrocento art. Dell sided with R. Langton Douglas and Sandford Arthur Strong, a camp opposed to the opinions of Berenson and Fry.

Selected Bibliography

“A Tudor Manor House: Sutton Place by Guildford.” Burlington Magazine 7, no. 28 (Jul., 1905): 289-301; Introduction. Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Work of Modern French Artists. Brighton, England: Public Art Galleries, Brighton, 1910; My Second Country. London: John Lane, 1920.

Sources

“To the Readers of the Burlington Magazine.” Burlington Magazine 10, no. 43 (Oct., 1906): 6; Current Biography Yearbook. 1940 edition. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1940; Samuels, Ernst. Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979, pp. 390-1; Leahy, Helen Rees. “The Burlington Magazine, 1903-1911.” in, Mansfield, Elizabeth, ed. Art History and its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 232-234; [obituary:] “Mr. Robert Dell.” Burlington Magazine 77, no. 449. (August 1940): 67; “Robert Dell Dies, A British Writer.” New York Times July 21, 1940, p. 29.

Delisle, Léopold Victor

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: Delisle, Léopold Victor

Other Names:

Léopold Delisle

Gender: male

Date Born: 24 October 1826

Date Died: 21 July 1910

Place Born: Valognes, Normandy, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents)

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Bibliothèque nationale de France

Overview

Curator of manuscripts and later head of the Bibliothèque Nationale, developed paleographic techniques used by art historians. He was born in Valognes, Normandy, France, near Cherbourg. Delisle was provincially and not extensively educated in Valognes. However, Charles Duhérissier de Gerville, a nobleman and collector of manuscripts, hired him to copy manuscripts in Gerville’s collection. From Gerville, Delisle learned the basics of paleography gaining entrance to the école des Chartres in 1846. He published his first article in 1847 while still a student there. He witnessed the revolutions of 1848 and the destruction of medieval monuments. In 1851 he won the first Prix Gobert by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for his piece, “Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie au Moyen Age.” After graduating in 1849, one of Delisle’s teachers, Benjamin Guérard (1797-1854) was appointed to a position at the Bibliothèque Nationale and hired him for the Department of Manuscripts in 1852. In 1857 he married Louise-Laure Burnouf, the daughter of orientalist Eugene Burnouf (1801-1852). Madame Delisle took an interest in her husband’s scholarship and, by Léopold’s later admission, wrote some of the articles under his name as she knew more languages than he. When Delisle came to the Department of Manuscripts, none of the manuscripts was cataloged. In 1868 he began publishing his history of the manuscript collections, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale which was completed in 1881 in four volumes. Delisle rose rapidly through the ranks, making curator in 1871 and Administrator General of the whole library in 1874. His scholarship helped develop what is today the Catalogue général des livres imprimés as well as the principles on which it is based. He regularly contributed articles to the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes and the Journal des Savants. As Administrator General, he courageously refused to leave his post when the Commune of 1871 attempted to replace him with an unqualified partisan. Vigorous beyond his years, he was forced into retirement in 1905 at age 79, learning of it only by reading of his successor in the newspaper. The event reportedly hastened Louise-Laure’s death the same year. Delisle’s used his paleographic analytical techniques for manuscript illumination, establishing “schools” of painting based upon a critical study of the painting and text.

Selected Bibliography

L’Apocalypse en français au XIIIe siècle: (Bibl. nat. fr. 403). Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1901; Catalogue général des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque nationale. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1897- ; Monasticon Gallicanum: collection de 168 planches de vues topographiques réprésentant les monastères de l’ordre de Saint-Benoit, Congrégation de Saint-Maur, avec deux cartes des établissements bénédictins en France. Paris: V. Palmé, 1871.

Sources

Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford, p. 85, mentioned; WBD 404; Bates, David. “Léopold Delisle.” Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline. Volume 2: History. Edited by Helen Damico and Joseph B. Zavadil. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995, pp. 101-113, The Dictionary of Art.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

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