Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance
Overview
Giotto scholar; notes about Coletti’s opinions appear in Richard Offner‘s annotated catalog of the 1937 Mostra Giottesca.
Sources
Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p,19, note 1;
Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance
Career(s): educators
Institution(s): Indiana University Bloomington
Overview
Distinguished professor of art history, Indiana University, Bloomington, specialist in the Art of Renaissance Italy. Cole was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated with a BA from Western Reserve University in 1962, earning his master’s degree in art history at Oberlin in two years later. Following this, Cole completed his doctorate in art history at Bryn Mawr in 1969. His dissertation examined the work of fourteenth century Florentine painter Agnolo Gaddi (c.1350–1396). Cole was appointed Assistant Professor of art history at the University of Rochester, NY in 1969 before joining the faculty at Indiana University in 1973. There, he was appointed Professor in 1977 and Distinguished Professor in 1988. During this period, in addition to publishing his dissertation on Gaddi, Cole produced numerous monographs, focusing on artists of the Italian Renaissance — including Giotto, Massaccio, Piero della Francesca, and Titian — as well as a number of survey texts on the period.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Cole left the University to become Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). He would go on to occupy the role for over seven years between December 2001 and early 2009 becoming the institution’s longest serving chair. He received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his work in 2008. Amongst his signature initiatives were “We the People” and “Picturing America” which emphasized the teaching of the humanities in public schools, in part by widely distributing high-quality reproductions of American artworks. Cole was also an early champion of the digital humanities, establishing the NEH Office of Digital Humanities during his tenure. Following his departure from NEH in 2009, Cole served as President and CEO of the American Revolution Center, and in 2012 joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center as a Senior Fellow.
Selected Bibliography
Agnolo Gaddi. New York: Clarendon Press, 1977;
Giotto and Florentine Painting, 1280-1375. New York: Harper and Row, 1976;
Italian Art, 1250-1550: the Relation of Renaissance Art to Life and Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1987;
Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980;
The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian, New York: Routledge, 1983;
Sienese Painting in the Age of the Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985;
Piero della Francesca: Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Art, New York: Harper Collins, 1991;
Giotto: the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. New York: George Braziller, 1993;
Studies in the History of Italian Art 1250–1550. London: Pindar, 1996;
Titian and Venetian Paintings, 1450–1590. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999;
The Informed Eye: Understanding Masterpieces of Western Art, Chicago: Dee 1999.
Distinguished professor of art history, Indiana University, Bloomington, specialist in the Art of Renaissance Italy. Cole was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated with a BA from Western Reserve University in 1962, earning his master’s degree in
Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, ceramic ware (visual works), Classical, Greek pottery styles, and pottery (visual works)
Overview
Historian of Greek pottery.
Selected Bibliography
Knossos Pottery Handbook: Greek and Roman. London: British School at Athens, 2001; Greek Geometric Pottery: a Survey of Ten Local Styles and their Chronology. London: Methuen, 1968; Geometric Greece. London: E. Benn, 1977; Knossos: the Sanctuary of Demeter. London: British School of Archaeology at Athens, 1973; and G. L. Huxley, eds. Kythera: Excavations and Studies Conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British School at Athens. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press,1973.
Sources
Klados: Essays in Honour of J. N. Coldstream. Bulletin Supplement. University of London Institute of Classical Studies 63. London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1995.
Citation
"Coldstream, J. N.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/coldstreamj/.
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Subject Area(s): Florentine, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, painting (visual works), and Renaissance
Overview
Collaborator of Offner’s Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Cohn studied in Berlin between 1923-26 under Adolph Goldschmidt and Freiburg, 1926-29 under Hans Jantzen, for whom he wrote his dissertation in 1929. His topic was on Han Holbein the Younger. Between 1931 and 1933 Cohn worked as a volunteer in the prints and drawings and library sections at the Staatlichen Museen in Berlin. When the Nazis came to power, Cohn, a protestant of Jewish lineage, was dismissed from his position. He worked for the Heitz publishing firm in Strassburg on their book series on prints (Einblattdrucke) from specific publishers and libraries until 1935 when he emigrated to Italy. There, New York University professor Richard Offner hired him as an assistant, in addition to another German, Klara Steinweg, to work on his corpus of Florentine painting, the Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. When World War II erupted in Europe, Cohn and Offner left for the United States and Steinweg back to Germany. Cohn spent the war years back in Italy, in Assisi, gathering material on the influence of the “commune” on 13th-century cultural life. After the war, Cohn returned to Florence where he worked as a translator and in the archives of the Uffizi. He was working on a documentary volume of Florentine painting, supported by a research grant from Germany, when he died at age 55.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Der Wandel der Architekturgestaltung in den Werken Hans Holbeins d. j.: ein Beitrag zur Holbein-Chronologie. Ph.D., Freiburg, 1929, published, Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1930; Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des deutschen Einblattholzschnitts im 2. Drittel des 15. Jahrhunderts. Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1934; Rubens. [Italian] Florence: Electra editrice, 1951, English, New York: Crown Publishers, 1951; Luca Cranach, 1472-1553. Milan: Electra Editrice, 1956; Rembrandt, 1606-1669. Milan: Electra Editrice, 1956; Hans Holbein, 1497-1543. Milan: Electra Editrice, 1957; Einblattdrucke der Strassburger druckerei Johannes Grüninger. Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1937; Holz- und metallschnitte aus öffentl. in- und ausländischen sammlungen und Bibliotheken in Innsbruck, Salzburg, Wien, Delsberg, Neuenstadt, St. Gallen, Lyon, Paris, Strassburg, Tunbridge Wells. Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1938; Holz- und metallschnitte aus öffentlichen sammlungen und bibliotheken in Maihingen, Marburg, Neisse, Nürnberg, Rosenheim, Rottenburg, Stuttgart und Würzburg. Strassburg: Heitz, 1935; Holz- und metallschnitte aus öffentlichen sammlungen und bibliotheken in Hannover, Koblenz, Köln, Leipzig und Lüneburg. Strassburg: Heitz, 1935; contributor, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. New York: Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1935-1939.0.Metzler
Sources
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. 95-8; [obituary:] Middeldorf, Ulrich. “In Memoriam Wernere Cohn.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes Florenz 9 (1959/60): 265.
Citation
"Cohn, Werner." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cohnw/.
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Collaborator of Offner’s Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Cohn studied in Berlin between 1923-26 under Adolph Goldschmidt and Freiburg, 1926-29 under Hans Jantzen,
Subject Area(s): Indian (South Asian), Islam, Islamic (culture or style), Medieval (European), and Southeast Asian
Overview
Medievalist art historian who later focused on Islamic and Indian art. Cohn-Wiener was born to Alfred Cohn, a pensioner, and Helene Wiener. After graduating from the Bromberg Gymnasium (West Prussia, today Bydgoszcz, Poland) in 1902 he studied art history under the major art historians of Germany in Berlin and Heidelberg. These included, Adolph Goldschmidt, Heinrich Wölfflin, Max J. Friedländer, Arthur Haseloff, Carl Nicolaus Heinrich Justi, Hanns Swarzenski, Werner Weisbach–Haseloff and Swarzenski were the ones highlighted in the printed version of his dissertation. That dissertation, written under Henry Thode, 1906 and issued the following year, was on the medieval Codex Bruchsal. From 1906 to 1908, he was an assistant at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe (Technical University of Karlsruhe) under Professor Marc Rosenberg (1852-1930), researching throughout Europe. He shortened his name to simply “Cohn” in 1907. Between 1908 to 1933, Cohn was a lecturer in art history at Humboldt University in Berlin. His two-volumen Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Stile (Developmental History of Style), 1910, appeared in Russian in 1913. In 1919 he advanced to head of the art history department, eventually, 1926, becoming chair of the faculty. Cohn had an engaging lecture style, organizing his talks around events on Western art history from antiquity to the present and synthesizing Asian art as well. An engaging speaker, his university lectures attracted 300-400 in addition to talks at the Jewish Community College, in museum tours, and radio broadcasts. During this time, Cohn’s interests changed to middle eastern and Asian art. He made two study trips, 1924 and 1925, through Central Asia, Russia, and China researching Islamic and far eastern art. He discovered unknown monuments in Turkistan (in Samarkand, Bukhara) Leading to his book, Turan. Cohn continued his research trips in 1930 and 1932 through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. At his return to Germany in 1933, the Nazi racial laws against Jews took effect Cohn, who had converted to Christianity, was nevertheless dismissed from all his positions. His publications banned, he was forced to emigrate, first to London as a guest of Lord Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), lecturing at the Royal Asiatic Society, the India Society, and the University of London. Through his connection with Lord Samuel, he was offered a job in India heading the museums and art school for the Maharajah of Baroda in 1934. He modernized both institutions, founding departments in Islamic Art and Indian Miniatures (the Museum included Western art). He lectured at Bombay University as well. Cohn moved to the United States in 1939, for health reasons, securing a stipend at the newly-founded American Institute for Iranian Art and Archeology in New York (an initiative of Arthur Upham Pope). He died there in 1941, leaving an immense collection of more than 3,500 photographs from Turkestan and other countries.
Cohn’s book, Turan, was for a long time the only work on Islamic architecture in Central Asia. However, he spoke poor English and his scholarship fell, like that of his mentor, Thode, “more in the category of a popular lecturer. He [was] not an outstanding authority in the field of Oriental art…” (Walter W. S. Cook).
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Uber den Codex Bruchsal I der Karlsruher Hof- u. Landesbibliothek und eine ihm verwandte Handschrift. Heidelberg, 1906, [published] Karlsruhe: Lang, 1907; Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Stile in der bildenden Kunst. vol 1: Vom Altertum bis zur Gotik. vol 2: Von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig: Teubner, 1910; Willy Jaeckel. Leipzig: Verlag von Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1920; Das Kunstgewerbe des Ostens. Ägypten, Vorderasien, Islam, China und Japan Geschichte, Stile, Technik. Berlin: Verlag für kunstwissenschaft, 1923; Asia: Einführung in die Kunstwelt des Ostens: Indien, Chia, Japan, Islam. Berlin: R. Mosse, 1929; Die jüdische Kunst. Ihre Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin: M. Wasservogel, 1929; Turan: Islamische Baukunst in Mittelasien. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1930; “An Unknown Timurid building.” Burlington Magazine 16 (1935): 272-277; Catalogue of the European Picture in the Baroda Picture Gallery. Baroda: Baroda State Press, 1935; “The Origin of Persian Carpet Patterns.” Islamic Culture (Hyderabad) 11 (1937); “Persian Architecture in Central Asia.” In, Pope, Arthur Upham, ed. Survey of Persian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938; “The Baroda Picture Gallery.” Asiatic Review 34 (1938): 89-90; “Miniatures of a Razm Nameh from Akbar’s Time.” Indian Art 12 (1938): 90-92; “A relief by the Master of Naumburg.” Burlington Magazine 77 (1940): 27.
Sources
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. 101-4.
Archives
Laserson, Maurice and Cohn-Wiener, Ernst : correspondence (1924-1938), Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide. https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb1556-wl805, GB 1556 WL 805.
Contributors: Cassandra Klos and Emily Crockett
Citation
Cassandra Klos and Emily Crockett. "Cohn-Wiener, Ernst." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cohnwienere/.
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Medievalist art historian who later focused on Islamic and Indian art. Cohn-Wiener was born to Alfred Cohn, a pensioner, and Helene Wiener. After graduating from the Bromberg Gymnasium (West Prussia, today Bydgoszcz, Poland) in 1902 he studied ar
Subject Area(s): Expressionist (style), German (culture, style, period), German Expressionist (movement), Medieval (European), and museums (institutions)
Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors
Institution(s): Berliner Museen
Overview
Museum director, exponent of German Expressionism, especially August Macke. Cohen was born in 1880 to Helene and Friedrich Cohen. His father was a book publisher in Bonn, Germany. Cohen graduated from the Städtisches Progymnasium mit Oberrealschule in 1898, and the following year began the study of ancient languages. Between 1898 and 1903 he studies art history, philosophy and archaeology at the universities of Bonn under Paul Clemen, at Munich under Berthold Riehl, Berlin under Heinrich Wölfflin, and finally Strassberg under Georg Dehio and Ernst Polaczek. In 1903 he completed is doctoral degree in Munich under Dehio with a dissertation title,Studien zu Quintin Metsys(published 1904). He was hired on the editorial staff of the Thieme-Becker Künstler Lexikon in Leipzig. In 1906, and volunteered at the Staatliche Museen Berlin (Kaiser-Friedrich Museum and Kunstgewerbemuseum/Museum of Decorative Arts). From 1908 to 1914, he worked at the Rheinischen Provinzialmuseum in Bonn, first as a research assistant and then as an assistant director, Hans Lehner (1865-1938). There he helped re-organize the departments of medieval and modern art, uniting the Gemäldegalerie (picture gallery) with the Wesendonk Collection and numerous permanent loans from the Berliner Museen. Soon after, he published a scholarly catalog using his connections in the contemporary art world, particularly his friendship with the Expressionist painter August Macke. Though his efforts qualified him for a position at the Berliner Museen, his partial deafness was considered too great and passed over. In 1912, Cohen, together with Ernst Gosebuch, Fritz Wichert, Karl Ernst Osthaus, Alfred Hagelstange, Richard Reiche helped mount the Sonderbund exhibition exhibition in Cologne, the first major exhibition of German Expressionism. From 1914 to 1933, he worked at the Städtlischen Kunstmuseum Dusseldörf, first as a directorial assistant and (from 1920 onward) as curator working in close cooperation with the director, Karl Koetschau. His interest now in 19th century and contemporary art, Cohen largely determined the purchases of the museum which brought him in close contact with art dealers such as Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937), galleries, artists (Lovis Corinth, Alexei Jawlensky, Max Pechstein, Otto Pankok, Erich Heckel) and collectors. In 1915 he founded the “Society for the Promotion of German Art of the 20th Century.” In the Summer of 1918, he planned the exhibition “Das junge Rheinland” (“The Young Rheinland at the Kölnischen Kunstverein (Art Society). The Düsseldorf artists were conservative and lobbied against their purchases, Koetschau and Cohen remained committed to modern art. Cohen continued to organize numerous exhibitions for art associations in Düsseldorf and Cologne. He married Margaret Umbach (1892-1960), an artist, in 1920. He published the first book about August Macke in 1922 shortly after his death. In 1928, he integrated the picture gallery of the Kunstmuseum into the new building of the museum. When the Nazi racial laws took effect in 1933, Cohen, who was Christian but from Jewish lineage, was forced to retire as an undesirable “non-Aryan.” A claim for re-establishment of service was rejected. Despite difficult economic conditions and health problems, Cohen worked as a private art appraiser. Increasing persecution followed him; he was prohibited to enter his former workplace, forced to move residences numerous times, and ultimately required to divorce his non-Jewish wife (1942). In 1941, he was arrested for “alleged aid to fraud by backdating.” These charges were later dropped, but Cohen was convicted early in 1942 of trivial unlawful acts. Imprisoned under a “protective custody” sentence. Although disabled by a stroke, he was deported in July 1942, to the Dachau concentration camp. He died three months later. Cohen’s writings reveal a subtle, quite humorous, sometimes extremely sharp-tongued author, an art historian with heart and soul, a committed spokesman for contemporary art, an unyielding advocate of his convictions.”(Sitt) p. 101.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Studien zu Quinten Metsys. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Malerei in den Niederlanden. Bonn: Verlag von Friedrich Cohen, 1904; Die mittelalterliche und neuere Abteilung. Vol.2 of Führer durch das Provinzialmuseum in Bonn. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1913; Großer wissenschaftlicher Katalog der Gemäldegalerie des Provinzialmuseums in Bonn, vorwiegend Sammlung Wesedonk. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1914; August Macke. Leipzig: Klinkhardt,1922; Friedrich Deiker. Aufzeichnungen und Briefe. Düsseldorf; L. Schwann, 1926; [ Thieme-Becker entries:] Hieronymus Bosch; Pieter Bruegel (Breughel) d.Ä.; Joos (Josse) van Cleve (Kleef) d.J.; Marcellus (Marcellis) Coffermanns (Koffermanns, Koffermaker); Jakob Cornelisz van Amsterdam; Colijn de Coter; Heinrich Christoph Kolbe; Etienne Maria Kolbe; Simon Meister (mit Ernst Meister und Nikolaus Meister); Walter Ophey.
Sources
Sitt, Martina. Auch ein Bild braucht einen Anwalt: Walter Cohen: Leben zwischen Kunst und Recht Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertrieben Wissenschaftler. München: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 91-95.
Contributors: Cassandra Klos
Citation
Cassandra Klos. "Cohen, Walter." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cohenw/.
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Museum director, exponent of German Expressionism, especially August Macke. Cohen was born in 1880 to Helene and Friedrich Cohen. His father was a book publisher in Bonn, Germany. Cohen graduated from the Städtisches Progymnasium mit Oberrealschu
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Renaissance architectural and garden historian; Princeton professor 1949-1988. Coffin was born to H. Errol Coffin and Lois Robbins (Coffin). His father was a practicing architect. The younger Coffin graduated from Princeton University in 1940 with an A. B. He began graduate work at Yale University the same year, but with the outbreak of World War II, Coffin joined the United States Army in 1942. At discharge in 1945, he returned to graduate school, this time Princeton, and gained an M.F.A. in 1947. He married Nancy M. Nesbit the same year. Coffin joined the University of Michigan in 1947, teaching for two years. He returned to Princeton as a lecturer in art and archaeology in 1949. He received a Fulbright fellowship to Italy for the 1951-1952 year to complete his dissertation research. His Ph.D., was granted from Princeton in 1954 with a dissertation on Pirro Ligorio and the Villa d’Este. The same year he was appointed an assistant professor at Princeton. He rose quickly through the ranks at his alma mater, making associate professor in 1956. He was appointed full professor in 1960. His book, The Villa d’Este at Tivoli, a portion of his dissertation research, appeared in 1961. He chaired the art and archaeology department between 1964 and 1970. During his time, he orchestrated the renovation of the Marquand Library of Art and Architecture. In 1970 he was named Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of the History of Architecture. The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome was published in 1979. Coffin retired professor emeritus in 1988. He wrote The English Garden: Meditation and Memorial in 1994. In retirement, he spent the 1995-1996 year as Kress Professor at the CASVA National Gallery of Art from 1995 to 1996. A book was on Princeton University’s Graduate College, published in 2000. He suffered a heart attack in 2003. His final book, a biography of Pirro Ligorio, the subject of his dissertation, appeared posthumously.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Pirro Ligorio and the Villa d’Este. Ph.D., Princeton, 1954; The Villa d’Este at Tivoli. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960; The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979; “Pirro Ligorio on the Nobility of the Arts.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 191-210; “Pope Marcellus II and Architecture.” Architectura 9 no. 1 (1979): 11-29.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 51, mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 433; Raub, Cymbre. “An Interview with David Coffin.” Princeton Journal [individual issued titled:] Landscape 2 (1985): 221-230; [obituaries:] Turner, A. Richard. “David R. Coffin (1918-2003).” Society of Architectural Historians Newsletter 48 no. 1 (2004): 13,19-20; Benes, Mirka. “A Tribute to Two Historians of Landscape Architecture: David R. Coffin (1918-2003) and Elisabeth B. MacDougall (1925-2003).” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63 no. 2 (June 2004): 248-54
Renaissance architectural and garden historian; Princeton professor 1949-1988. Coffin was born to H. Errol Coffin and Lois Robbins (Coffin). His father was a practicing architect. The younger Coffin graduated from Princeton University in 1940 with
Place Born: Brighton, Brighton and Hove, England, UK
Place Died: Kew, Richmond upon Thames, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents)
Institution(s): Fitzwilliam Museum
Overview
Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1908-1937; illuminated manuscript scholar and of William Morris. Cockerell was born to John Cockerell (1842-1877), a coal merchant and Alice Elizabeth Bennett (Cockerell) (d. 1900). The younger Cockerell attended St. Paul’s School, London, in 1882 but the death of his father when Cockerell was ten required him to leave in 1885 to work in the family business. He rose, under his uncles’ patronage, to parter in 1889, but left permanently in 1892. Cockerell made the acquaintance of William Morris in 1886 and John Ruskin in 1887; he and Ruskin toured the French churches at Abbeville and Beauvais, cementing Cockerell’s interest in medieval art and beginning a collection of illuminated manuscripts. He became librarian and in all but name secretary to Morris, acting as Morris’ executor in charge of completing to the publications of the Kelmscott Press after Morris’ death. Cockerell’s history of the Press, 1898, was the last publication of the Press. Cockerell subsequently served as amanuensis to poet/adventurer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) and to the publisher and manuscript collector Henry Yates Thompson (1838-1928) advising the latter on acquisitions to Thompson’s collection. Cockerell joined Emery Walker (1851-1933) in an engraving business in 1900 to support himself. He visited Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana in 1903. Cockerell left the engraveing firm in 1904. He married a manuscript artist, Florence Kate Kingsford (1872-1949) in 1907. The following year Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, director Montague Rhodes James resigned and Cockerell succeeded him, despite Cockerell’s never having completed even a high school education (the recommendation likely came through Thompson, whose collection both men had advised). As a museum director, Cockerell’s installations were highly sensitive and artistic. James had been uninterested in display (Cockerell claimed the museum was a pigsty). Cockerell placed large boquets of flowers and furniture among the Fitzwilliam collections giving the feel of a country home according to many. Cockerell’s personal collection of medieval manuscripts was so extensive by 1908 that he provided many pieces to the Burlington House exhibition of the same year. His knowledge of medieval manuscripts led to an apppointment of honorary fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, between 1910 and 1916. His lectures inspired the student Trenchard Cox, later director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, to become an art museum director. Cockerell agressively sought new donations, notably those of the Marlay and Courtauld. His expansion of the Fitzwilliam was accomplished in sections over the years 1922-1936. A second fellow appointment at Downing College came in 1932. Though a confirmed atheist, he struck a scholarly friendship with the Roman Catholic nun, Dame Laurentia McLachlan (1866-1953) Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey, Worcestershire. He was knighted in 1934 and appointed London advisor to the Felton Bequest for the Victoria National Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (then New South Wales) in 1936. He retired from the Fitzwilliam in 1937 and was succeeded by the collector Louis C. G. Clarke. He retired to Richmond, Surrey, confined to bed after 1951. As his long life exceeded his retirement income, Cockerell sold portions of his library, including proofs and first editions of the Kelmscott press in 1956 and his medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in 1957 and 1959. He died of heart failure at his home at age 94 and jhis body cremated. His son, Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999), was the inventor of the hovercraft.
Cockerell posessed a quirky personality; an extensive diarist and voluminous correspondent, his life and letters were documented in numerous books, several of which well within his lifetime. He acted as literary executor to Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Thomas Hardy in addition to Morris. Though limited financially personally, Cockerell assembled one of the finest medieval manuscript collections in private hands. He astutely named knowlegeable men in various art fields as “Honorary Keepers” to make use of their expertise. “A characteristically English enthusiasm for the study of Italian humanistic manuscripts is very largely due to his initiative” (Bell). His Old Testament Miniatures work was updated by the Morgan Library manuscripts scholar John H. Plummer.
Selected Bibliography
A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press. London: Kelmscott Press, 1898; and Walker, Emery. A Psalter and Hours Executed before 1270 for a Lady Connected with St. Louis, Probably his Sister Isabelle of France, Founder of the Abbey of Longchamp, now in the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson. London: Chiswick Press,1905; The Gorleston Psalter, a Manuscript of the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century in the Llibrary of C. W. Dyson Perrins. London: Chiswick Press, 1907; introduction, Exhibition of Illuminated Manuscripts. London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1908; and Sparling, H. Halliday. The Kelmscott Press and William Morris Master-craftsman. London: Macmillan, 1924; and James, M. R. Two East Anglian Psalters at the Bodleian Library, Oxford: the Ormesby Psalter, Ms. Douce 366. Oxford: Roxburghe Club/Oxford University Press, 1926; and James, M. R. Old Testament Miniatures: Iillustrations of the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: sent by Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski to Shah Abbas the Great, king of Persia, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library at New York. Oxford: Roxburghe Club/Oxford University Press, 1927.
Sources
Cockerell, Sydney. Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: J. Cape, 1940; Cockerell, Sydney. The Best of Friends: further letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Hart-Davis, 1956; Blunt, Wilfird. Cockerell: Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, friend of Ruskin and William Morris, and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. London: H. Hamilton,1964; Corrigan, Felicitas. The Nun, the Infidel & the Superman: the Rremarkable Friendships of Dame Laurentia McLachlan with Sydney Cockerell, Bernard Shaw, and Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; Alan Bell, “Cockerell, Sir Sydney Carlyle (1867-1962).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; Panayotova, Stella. I Turned it into a Palace: Sydney Cockerell and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Cambridge, UK: Fitzwilliam Museum, 2008; “Sydney Cockerell.” A Century of Giving, section 1. Fitzwilliam Museum https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/friends/section1.html; [obituaries:] “Sir Sydney Cockerell.” Times (London) May 2, 1962, p. 16;
Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1908-1937; illuminated manuscript scholar and of William Morris. Cockerell was born to John Cockerell (1842-1877), a coal merchant and Alice Elizabeth Bennett (Cockerell) (d. 1900). The younger Cockere
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), and sculpture (visual works)
Institution(s): none
Overview
Architectural historian and architect; first to record entasis in Greek temples. Cockerell was trained between1809-1810 by his father, Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753-1827), to follow in his footsteps as an architect. He also studied with the architect of the British Museum, Sir Robert Smirke (1780-1867). Cockerell toured Europe between 1810-1817, sometimes delivering messages to the British fleet, but also visiting the regions of the Ottoman Empire and southern Italy. He met Lord Byron and his colleague, John Foster (1887-1846), the latter with whom he traveled. Cockerell’s interest in Greece was to measure the architectural monuments, a purpose which allowed him to make several important discoveries for architectural and art history. After visiting the island of Delos, Cockerell and Foster moved to Athens, where they met the German archaeologist Jakob Linkh (1786-1841), Otto von Stackelberg (1787-1837), and Carl Haller von Hallerstein. The five traveled to Aegina in 1811 to excavate the temple there. Their discoveries included the pedimental sculpture from the temple, later identified as the Temple of Aphaia (Glyptothek, Munich). Next they traveled next to the Peloponnese where they discovered the Centauromachy frieze at the temple of Apollo, Bassai (British Museum, London). Cockerell continued on to Sicily where his facility for imagining buildings from their ruins was most aptly demonstrated. Returning to Athens, Cockerell discover the entasis in the columns of the Parthenon and the Erechtheion; although entasis had been known in Roman buildings, Cockerell was the first to notice this in Greek structures as well. In 1815 he moved to Italy, remaining there until his return to England in 1817. Cockerell worked as a practicing architect, producing designs for the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, the Taylorian and Randolph buildings at Oxford, and restoration work of St. Paul Cathedral, London. His design for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, used the Ionic order and frieze he had observed at Bassai. Cockerell was part of a committee including Jacques-Ignace Hittorff and Thomas Leverton Donaldson, which met between 1836-1837 to determine whether the Elgin Marbles and other Greek statuary in the British Museum had originally been colored. They concluded that they had not, (their findings appear in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects for1842), despite Cockerell’s knowledge that other sculpture had. In 1840 he was appointed Professor of Architecture at Oxford, a position he held until 1857 (Emeritus thereafter). He was made a member of the Society of Dilettanti the following year. Cockerell supplied the drawings supplement volume to James “Anthenian” Knight and Nicolas Revett’s to The Antiquities of Athens, 1830. His survey of the sculpture and architecture of Wells Cathedral appeared in 1851. He is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, near Christopher Wren’s tomb.
As a practicing architect, he believed, with Vitruvius, that architects needed a deep and abiding respect for history. He was unswayed by the prevailing Gothic trend in architectural design. His diaries reveal a strong intellect and fastidious temperament. Cockerell knew J. W. M. Turner and planned for Turner to do the illustrations for his publications on Bassai and Aigina. Though Cockerell was the first to note entasis on Acropolis buildings, this discovery was first published in a work on the Athenian architecture by Francis Cranmer Penrose (1817-1903) in 1851, whose notes Cockerell had given to Penrose. Cockerell had discovered color residue on the Temple of Aphaia at Aigina, but again, it was other (Guillaume-Abel Blouet in 1832) who published the material.
Selected Bibliography
and Combe, Taylor, and Hawkins, Edward, and Birch, Samuel. A Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles in the British Museum. 6 vols. London: W. Bulmer/British Museum:1812-1861; and Kinnard, William, and Donaldson, Thomas L., et al. Supplement to, Stuart, James, and Revett, Nicholas. The Antiqvities of Athens. (supplement:) London: Priestley and Weale, 1830; Iconography of the West front of Wells Cathedral, with an Appendix on the Sculptures of other Medieval Churches in England. London: J. H. Parker, 1851; The Temples of Jupiter Panhellenius at ægina, and of Apollo Epicurius at Bassæ near Phigaleia in Arcadia. 4 vols. London: J. Weale, 1860.
Sources
Watkin, David. The Life and Work of C. R. Cockerell. London: Zwemmer, 1974; Vickers, Michael. “Cockerell, Charles.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 295-296; “C(harles) R(obert) Cockerell.” Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 69-72.
Architectural historian and architect; first to record entasis in Greek temples. Cockerell was trained between1809-1810 by his father, Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753-1827), to follow in his footsteps as an architect. He also studied with the archite
