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Art Historians

Clapp, Frederick M.

Full Name: Clapp, Frederick M.

Other Names:

  • Frederick Mortimer Clapp

Gender: male

Date Born: 1879

Date Died: 1969

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States


Overview

First director of the Frick Collection, 1936-1951; poet. Clapp hailed from a priviledged family; a relative of his mother, Mary Carroll, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His father was Washington F. Clapp. He attended the City College of New York 1896-1898 and then Yale 1899-1902 receiving an B. A. and M.A. He returned to the City College, teaching Greek from 1904 to 1906. He moved to California to lecture on Elizabethan drama and Russian literature for the extention services at the University of California, 1906-1908. He traveled throughout Europe, discovering an interest in art and, by reading Bernard Berenson, Italian art. He married Maud Caroline Ede (1876-1960), an artist from Florence, in 1908. He entered the Sorbonne, in 1909 to pursue his doctorate studying under Henry Lemonnier, Émile Bertaux and Émail Mâle. Clapp was awarded his Docteur ès lettres in 1914 with a dissertation on Pontormo’s drawings. In 1916 he published a book and catalogue raisonné on the paintings of the artist. Tthe same year, he began publishing poetry, issuing collections of verse through the 1950s. Clapp worked with Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., at Princeton University. He joined the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army (precursor to the air force), training to be a pilot in Canada. He war service was with the 17th and 22nd Aero Squandrons station in Dunkirk. After the war, he published articles in the Princeton journal Art Studies in the early ’20s. In 1926 Clapp joined the University of Pittsburgh to chair their program in the history of art. He developed Pittsburgh’s art library and photo-study collection traveling to Europe to secure the book and lantern slides. He became an exponent for art history education in the United States, reading a paper, “What can a Department of the Distory of Art Amount To?” in 1929. After the death of Mrs. Frick in 1931, Clapp was named adviser to the collection. Named organizing director in 1933, he oversaw the transformation of the Frick mansion from a home into the present museum. He hired the architect who design the building, John Russell Pope, adding a cloak room and lecture facilities. Clapp received an honorary doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh the same year. The museum opened late in 1935. He was named director in 1936. Clapp set about issuing a fine-press style folio edition of the collection which the war prevented from completion. When the American government mounted a touring show of German art ostensibly as war booty in 1946, he and Whitney Museum director Juliana R. Force spearheaded a campaign to return the art to Germany. Clapp kept the museum admission free, organizing public (and often non-art) lectures and concerts for which the Frick became famous. It was at a Frick lecture in 1947 that T. S. Elliot reputiated his opinion of the works of John Milton. He retired in 1951 and was succeeded by Franklin Biebel (1908-1966). He died at a New York Hosptial at age ninety. His papers are held at Yale University. Erwin Panofsky cited Clapp’s work on Pontormo one of serveral “very good art-historical books” with which European scholars such as himself were familiar before World War II.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Les dessins de Pontormo, catalogue raisonné, précédé d’un étude critique. University of Paris, 1914, published, Paris: Librairie ancienne H. Champion, E. Champion, 1914; Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo, his Life and Work. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916; “A Letter to Pontormo.” Art Studies 1 (1923): 65-66; “Arhats in Art.” Art Studies 3 (1925): [93]-130; “What can a Department of the Distory of Art Amount To?” [unpublished paper read before the Educational Clinic, Pittsburgh, April 12, 1929]; The Frick Collection: Paintings: Summary Catalogue. New York: Frick Collection, 1937ff.


Sources

Hoagland, Roland Waterbury. The Blue Book of Aviation; a Biographical History of American Aviation. Los Angeles: The Hoagland Company, 1932, pp. 92-93; “Removal of German Art to the U.S. Renews Controversy Over Ethics.” New York Times June 10, 1946, p. 22; Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford, 82-111. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 87, mentioned; WBD, 311 [obituary:] Horsley, Carter B. “Frederick Clapp of Frick Museum, Founding Director, 90, Dies.” New York Times December 17, 1969, p. 55.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Clapp, Frederick M.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/clappf/.


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First director of the Frick Collection, 1936-1951; poet. Clapp hailed from a priviledged family; a relative of his mother, Mary Carroll, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His father was Washington F. Clapp. He attended the City Coll

Clapham, A. W.

Full Name: Clapham, A. W.

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): English (culture or style) and Romanesque


Overview

wrote standard work on English Romanesque art


Selected Bibliography

English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest. Oxford, 1930.; English Romanesque Architecture of the Conquest. Oxford, 1934.


Sources

Bazin 514




Citation

"Clapham, A. W.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/claphama/.


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wrote standard work on English Romanesque art

Claflin, Agnes Rindge

Image Credit: Elisa Rolle

Full Name: Claflin, Agnes Rindge

Other Names:

  • Agnes Millicent Rindge Claflin

Gender: female

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1977

Place Born: Grand Rapids, Kent, MI, USA

Place Died: New Paltz, Ulster, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States


Overview

Vassar Professor of Art and Director of the Vassar Art Gallery. Claflin graduated from the Madeira School in 1917 and entered Mount Holyoke College that fall. She remained there until 1919. In 1921 she graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College. She taught briefly at Vassar College in 1923 as lecturer, but returned to Radcliffe to complete her graduate degrees, the M.A. in 1927 and Ph. D. in 1928. In 1929 she published her first book, Sculpture, “The contemporary point of view about the art of sculpture,” as she wrote in her introduction. She rejoined the Vassar faculty where she taught with the rank of professor, in 1931, for the next thirty-four years. Beginning in the 30’s, Claflin published articles in the Studio International and articles on Despiau in Parnassus. By 1936 she had written The Elder Pieter Bruegel: A Short Essay and an article on Ferdinand Dietz for the American German Review. During this time she began hiring German émigrés for Vassar who were fleeing Nazi persecution. Richard Krautheimer was the first in 1937 (he remained at Vassar until 1951). While still solely a professor, she compiled the catalog for art collection at Vassar in 1939, an accomplishment which won her added duties as the gallery’s director (1943-62). In 1940 she added another émigré to Vassar, 39-year-old medievalist Adolf Katzenellenbogen who remained until 1958. With the outbreak of World War II, Claflin served as Executive Secretary and Consultant in the Art Division of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs between 1941-42. Asked by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., to be a member of the fledgling Museum of Modern Art’s Advisory Committee in 1941, she served as the Assistant Executive Vice President to the Museum 1943-44. In 1943 she was elected to the American Association of Museums, and, in conjunction with MOMA’s exhibition on Alexander Calder of the same year, wrote and narrated one of the first art museum multi-media shows, a 10-minute film entitled Alexander Calder: Sculpture and Constructions. She married Philip W. Claflin in 1945. From 1945-48 she was Chairman of the College Art Association, remaining on its Board of Directors until 1951. When Richard Krautheimer moved to New York University, Claflin replaced him with the third of her conspicuous hires, Wolfgang Lotz in 1952. During all these years, she lectured widely at Vassar and elsewhere, finally retiring from the College in 1965. Claflin’s students included Aline Saarinen (critic & wife of architect Ero Saarinen) and Russell Lynes, Jr. Claflin is considered more an art teacher than scholar. Krautheimer wrote “she never aimed at being a scholar herself…[she was] an amateur in the best sense.” She considered her areas to be baroque and twentieth centuries.


Selected Bibliography

Sculpture. New York: Payson and Clarke, 1929; [Vassar College ] Art Gallery, 1939. Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1939; Vassar College Art Gallery: Selections from the Permanent Collection. Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1967; [film] Alexander Calder: Sculpture and Construction. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1944 [Produced by Hartley Studios].


Sources

An Exhibition in Memory of Agnes Rindge Claflin: 1900-1977. Poughkeepie, NY: Vassar Art Gallery, 1978.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Claflin, Agnes Rindge." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/claflina/.


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Vassar Professor of Art and Director of the Vassar Art Gallery. Claflin graduated from the Madeira School in 1917 and entered Mount Holyoke College that fall. She remained there until 1919. In 1921 she graduated magna cum laude from Radcl

Cirlot, Juan Eduardo

Full Name: Cirlot, Juan Eduardo

Other Names:

  • Juan Eduardo Cirlot

Gender: male

Date Born: 09 April 1916

Date Died: 11 May 1973

Place Born: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Place Died: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

Subject Area(s): art history, dictionaries, Spanish (culture or style), and symbols

Career(s): art historians, authors, composers (people in music), and poets


Overview

Poet, composer and author of a major symbol dictionary and co-author of Ars Hispaniae. Cirlot was the son of Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. After graduating from the College of the Jesuits, Barcelona, he worked as a customs agent and at the Banco Hispanoamericano. His initial interest was in music, which he studied until called as a soldier to fight against Franco in the Second Spanish Republic, 1937. With their defeat he was again mobilized by the Franco regime in 1940. Cirlot lived in Zaragoza, Spain, among culturati drawn to Surrealism, especially with the artist Alfonso Buñuel (Luis Buñuel’s brother). He and Alfonso tranlated the Surrealist poetry of Paul Éluard (1895-1952), André Breton (1896-1966), and Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) into Spanish. Through Surrealism, Cirlot developed beliefs in mysticism. During the years of World War II in Europe, he returned to the Banco Hispanoamericano and Barcelona in 1943, meeting the poet Benítez de Castro (1892-?). After the war, he published the first of many volumes of poetry, Canto de la Vida muerta, in 1946. He married Gloria Valenzuela in 1947. Cirlot joined the editorial staff of Argos publishers, composing music and collaborating with the Catalan artists group, Dau al Set. His first publicly performed composition, “Preludio in the Ateneo Barcelonés,” was played in 1948. The following year be began writing for the journal founded by Dau al Set, of the same name. Through the magazine, he met André Breton in Paris. Cirlot moved to Gustavo Gili publishers. In 1949 he met the ethnologist and musicologist Marius Schneider (1903-1982) who cultivated in Cirlot a fascination with symbology. Compatriot art historian José Gudiol assisted him in Gothic art studies. Cirlot’s first book on symbolism, El Ojo en la Mitología: su simbolismo, appeared in 1954. The same year he became a founding member of the Academia del Faro de San Cristóbal. Together with the American art historian George Kubler he co-authored a volume in the art encylopeida Ars Hispaniae in 1957. In 1958, he published a dictionary of symbols, Diccionario de símbolos tradicionales, translated into English in 1962 as A Dictionary of Symbols. This edition featured a prologue by Herbert Read. In 1963, a dispute with Dau al Set member Antoni Tàpies severed his connection with the group. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1971, he worked to see a volume on Picsso published before his death. He died immediately after surgery at his home in Barcelona in 1973. As an art historian, Cirlot is best known for his symbol dictionary which matched images to a discussion of their various iconographic implications. The book went through numerous subsequent edtions.


Selected Bibliography

Canto de la Vida muerta. Barcelona: Soc. Anónima Horta de Impresiones y Ediciones, 1946; El ojo en la mitología; su simbolismo. Masnou: Laboratorios del Norte de España, 1954; and Kubler, George. Arquitectura de los siglos XVII-XVIII. Ars Hispaniae 14. Madrid, 1957;Diccionario de símbolos tradicionales. Barcelona: L. Miracle, 1958, English, A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge & Paul, 1962; Introducción a la arquitectura de Gaudí. Barcelona: Editorial RM, 1966; Nacimiento de un genio. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1972, English, Picasso, Birth of a Genius. New York: Praeger, 1972.


Sources

The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978; [obituary:] Camón Aznar, José. “Juan Eduardo Cirlot.” Goya 115 (July 1973): 64.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Cirlot, Juan Eduardo." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cirlotj/.


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Poet, composer and author of a major symbol dictionary and co-author of Ars Hispaniae. Cirlot was the son of Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. After graduating from the College of the Jesuits, Barcelona, he worked as a customs agent and at t

Cicognara, Leopoldo, Conte

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Cicognara, Leopoldo, conte

Other Names:

  • Conte Francesco Leopoldo Cicognara

Gender: male

Date Born: 1767

Date Died: 1834

Place Born: Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Place Died: Venice, Veneto, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): bibliography and connoisseurship

Career(s): art collectors

Institution(s): Collegio dei Nobili


Overview

Art historian and collector, established “Cicognara” art bibliography. Cicognara was educated in Modena at the Collegio dei Nobili. As a young man he knew the sculptor Antonio Canova. In 1788 he moved to Rome where he was admitted to the Società dell’Arcadia. There he studied art with Domenico Corvi (1721-1803) and the German painter Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). In addition, he gained an enthusiasm for classical ruins and contemporary art theory. A member of the Italian nobility, Cicognara involved himself initially in politics with the risorgimento of Italy in the late eighteenth century. He held such posts as deputy to the Congress of Lyons (1801), and Councilor of State. He was briefly incarcerated when warring factions found him guilty of conspiracy. In 1805 he left political life to devote himself to the arts. Cicognara wrote several tracts on esthetics, including Del Bello, ragiomenti sette (1808), which caught the attention of the newly founded Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. He became the Academy’s director, using this position to research and publish further in the fine arts. Inspired by the early art histories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Seroux d’Agincourt, he published a three-volume history of sculpture, Storia delta scultura between 1813 and 1818. More than a mere chronology of art or a collection of biographical anecdotes, his history of sculpture weaves history, literary and political events into a cogent text. For this accomplishment, Cicognara was awarded foreign member’s status from the Institute of France. Beginning in 1815, he issued his survey of the monuments of Venice, which brought him international recognition. These volumes, learned guides to the city, were quickly translated into French as well as a second, updated Italian version. Perhaps because of his early career in politics, Cicogarna maintained that the Accademia’s primary role was to serve the public. He was a motivating force in opening the museum associated with the Academy, (Gallerie dell’Accademia) in 1817. In the 1820s, Cicognara renewed a friendship with Canova, the sculptor carving his image in 1822 and the author completing a biography of Canova in 1823. Throughout his collecting and writing, Cicognara amassed a fabulous art library. In 1821 he published what might be today his most consulted book, the inventory of his own library. Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte is a snapshot of the available literature on art and art history. In its own time, the collection’s value was evident enough for the Pope to purchase Cicognara’s library in 1824. It remains a discrete collection housed in the Vatican today. In his final years, Cicognara wrote and researched on the enamel work known as calcography (niello). The popularity of this work created a demand for this genre of art, so much so that fakes were created and sold as part of the Count’s collection. After Cicognara’s death, his collection of fifteenth and sixteenth century engravings of calcographic pictures were assembled by his nephew, Count Nanetti, and Ch. Albrizzi, under the title, The First Century of Calcography (1837). Among Cicognara’s contributions as an art historian were his recognition in 1824 that the spectacular Nymph of Fontainebleau was by Benvenuto Cellini. His attribution brought its relocation to the Louvre.


Selected Bibliography

“Del Bello, ragiomenti sette”, (Florence, 1808); Storia delta scultura, Venice, 1813-1818, 3 vols. fol. with 131 plates; monuments of Venice (2 vols. fol. 1815-20; a new, augmented edition, 1833-40 with 250 plates, Italian and French text); Calatogo ragionato dei libri d’arte, Pisa, 1821; Memorie spettanti alla storia della calcognafia, Prato, 1831, with atlas; “The First Century of Calcography” (Venice, 1837); Biografia di Antonio Canova. Venice: G. Missiaglia, 1823.


Sources

Kultermann, Udo. Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer Wissenschaft. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1981, p. 124 ; Catholic Encyclopedia (1908 ed.), vol. 3; Farinati, Valeria. “Cicognara, Leopoldo.” Dictionary of Art.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Cicognara, Leopoldo, Conte." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cicognaral/.


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Art historian and collector, established “Cicognara” art bibliography. Cicognara was educated in Modena at the Collegio dei Nobili. As a young man he knew the sculptor Antonio Canova. In 1788 he moved to Rome where he was admitted to the Società d

Chueca Goitia, Fernando

Image Credit: Arquitectura Viva

Full Name: Chueca Goitia, Fernando

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Spain

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), sculpture (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)


Overview

Professor of art and architectural history at the school of architecture in Madrid. He published monographs on the cathedrals of Valladolid and Salamanca. Chueca Goitia authored the thirteenth volume in the important Ars Hispaniae series, Arquitectura del siglo XVI (1953).


Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] Lafuente Ferrari, Enrique. Varia neoclasica: discurso del académico electo Fernando Chueca Goitia. Madrid: Real Academia de bellas artes de San Fernando, 1973, pp. 171-177; Invariantes castizos de la arquitectura española. Madrid: Editoria Dossat, 1947; Arquitectura del siglo XVI. Madrid: Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1953


Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 442; Encina, Juan de la. Fernando Chueca Goitia, su obra teórica entre 1947 y 1960. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura, 1982; Fernando Chueca Goitia: un arquitecto en la cultura española. Madrid: Fundación Antonio Camuñas, 1992.




Citation

"Chueca Goitia, Fernando." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/chuecagoitiaf/.


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Professor of art and architectural history at the school of architecture in Madrid. He published monographs on the cathedrals of Valladolid and Salamanca. Chueca Goitia authored the thirteenth volume in the important Ars Hispaniae series,

Christoffel, Ulrich

Full Name: Christoffel, Ulrich

Gender: male

Date Born: 1891

Date Died: 1975


Overview

student of Wölfflin



Sources

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Heinrich Wölfflin, 1864-1945: Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe. Joseph Ganter, ed. Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1982, p. 490.




Citation

"Christoffel, Ulrich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/christoffelu/.


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student of Wölfflin

Christe, Yves

Full Name: Christe, Yves

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): art theory, Christianity, iconography, and semiotics


Overview

semiotics applied to christian iconography


Selected Bibliography

La Vision de Matthieu. Origines et développement d’une image de la Seconde Parousie. Paris, 1973.


Sources

Bazin 349




Citation

"Christe, Yves." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/christey/.


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semiotics applied to christian iconography

Christ, Johann Friedrich

Full Name: Christ, Johann Friedrich

Other Names:

  • Johann Friedrich Christ

Gender: male

Date Born: 26 April 1700

Date Died: 09 March 1756

Place Born: Coburg, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Classical and Northern Renaissance


Overview

Early art historian and classicist; Cranach scholar; immediate precursor to Winckelmann. Christ’s family comprised a long line of civil servants. He was diversely educated including painting, etching and sculpting. By 1720 he was studying for state service himself in Jena, taking courses in philosophy, history and the law. After securing a position as a privy secretary in Saxe-Meiningen he began study in Halle in 1726. Christ published a life Lucas Cranach the elder the same year based upon biographies, archival research and, something relatively new for art writing, personal examination of the artist’s paintings. Christ stated in the book that the book was intended not to be part of a collection of artist’s lives, but an installment in a history of painting. Christ envisioned a book of the history of painting styles based upon study of all the arts (sculpture, graphics, etc.). His conception was to organize these by stylistic periods, a notion later brought to famous fruition under Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Christ’s was granted a master’s degree in 1728. Called to the university in Leipzig in 1731 as ausserordinarius professor, he traveled in Europe and England between 1733-1735 with the learned Count Heinrich von Bünau (1697-1762), the noble who later hired Winckelmann to be his librarian. He rose to ordinarius by 1739. His appointment as a professor of literature (Poesie) and history allowed him periodic lectures on painting and sculpture at Leipzig. In 1747 Christ issued a dictionary of artist’s marks, Anzeige und Auslegung der Monogrammatum with the encyclopedist Gottfried Sellius (d. 1767). Much of this was compiled from his personal graphics collection with which he used to teach. Christ declared this this work was to in part assist in developing a history of art based upon epochs, nations, schools and individual masters. Students who attended his lectures included two who later became important for art history, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (attending lectures between 1746-1748) and the classicist Christian Gottlob Heyne. Christ’s conception of art history–not a series of artist’s lives but as a stand-alone intellectual genre–marks the emergence of art history as a discipline. His rejection of the format based upon Giorgio Vasari and expanded by others greatly influenced Winckelmann, whose work Winckelmann had read (Kaufmann). Christ’s Anzeige und Auslegung was written to aid connoisseurship and the sorting out of authentic.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] De cura famae viro bono digna dissertationem … Leipzig, 1746, published, Leipzig: Ex Officina Langenhemia, 1746; Mvsevm Richterianvm continens fossilia animalia, vegetabilia mar. Leipzig: C. Fritsch, 1743; and Sellius, Gottfried.Anzeige und Auslegung der Monogrammatum, einzeln und verzogenen Anfangsbuchstaben de Nahmen, auch anderer Züge und Zeichen, unter welchen berühmte Mahler, Kupferstecher u.a. dergleichen Künstler, auf ihren Wercken sich verborgen haben … aus den ersten Wercken selbst, jetzt von neuem genommen. Leipzig: Caspar Fritschens wittwe, 1747


Sources

Eberlein, Kurt Karl. Die deutsche Litterärgeschichte der Kunst im 18. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunstwissenschaft. Karlsruhe: Müller, 1919, p. 14; Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 3-4; Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. “Antiquarianism, the History of Objects, and the History of Art before Winckelmann.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62 no. 3 (July 2001): 538-539; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. 2nd. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2007, pp. 50-51.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Christ, Johann Friedrich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/christj/.


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Early art historian and classicist; Cranach scholar; immediate precursor to Winckelmann. Christ’s family comprised a long line of civil servants. He was diversely educated including painting, etching and sculpting. By 1720 he was studying for stat

Choisy, Auguste

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Choisy, Auguste

Other Names:

  • François-Auguste Choisy

Gender: male

Date Born: 1841

Date Died: 1909

Place Born: Vitry-le-François, Grand Est, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): ancient, architecture (object genre), engineering, Medieval (European), sculpture (visual works), and structuralism


Overview

Architectural historian of ancient civilizations and engineer; Professor at the Polytechnique (Paris). Choisy was the son of an architect. He studied at the École Polytechnique, Paris, from 1861 to 1863 and from 1863 at the École des Ponts et Chaussées, also in Paris. As part of his education, he traveled to Rome and Athens, beginning in 1866 to study classical architectural elements as many students did. His interest was far more sustained by the structure of these ancient monuments than their decorative detail. Choisy was familiar with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and his examination of the structure of Gothic architecture. In 1873, Choisy issued L’Art de bâtir chez les romains, a structural analysis of Roman architecture including building materials and the workforce needed to construct it. This approach to architectural explanation led to a second book on the buildings of the Byzantine empire in 1883, and later one on Egypt. Choisy returned to the École des Ponts et Chaussées to teach beginning in 1876. He moved to the École d’Horticulture at Versailles in 1878 (to 1892) adding duties at his other alma mater, École Polytechnique in 1881. Between 1883 and 1894 he published studies on Greek architecture, employing epigraphical evidence, Etudes épigraphiques sur l’architecture grecque. Choisy’s magnum opus appeared in 1899, his two-volume Histoire de l’architecture. For this work, he developed single isometric drawings which combined in a single illustration, plan, elevation, section, and a perspective. This appealing graphic distillation was developed in full in his four-volume translation of Vitruvius Pollio’s Ten Books on Architecture of 1909. His condensation brought the classic text down four pages of text accompanied by a series of diagrams. Choisy’s early architectural analyses described buildings in social and material terms. The appearance of Histoire de l’architecture combined this approach with a historical determinism, a progression of styles set in the context of birth, maturing and decline.

Choisy “interpreted architecture exclusively in terms of the history of construction, demonstrating what he believed to be its essence in a series of grimly clever diagrams. His work is the logical culmination of two centuries of French rationalism and we shall not see its like again.” (Watkin)  His scholarship was employed by many subsequent architectural historians, including notably, W. R. Lethaby.


Selected Bibliography

L’art de bâtir chez les Romains. Paris: Ducher, 1873 link; L’art de bâtir chez les Byzantins. Paris: Société anonyme de publications périodiques, 1883;Etudes épigraphiques sur l’architecture grecque. Paris: Librairie de la Société anonyme de publications périodiques, 1883-1884 [published in four fasicules]; Histoire de l’architecture. 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1899; L’art de bâtir chez les éqyptiens. Paris: E. Rouveyre, 1904; Vitruve. 4 vols. Paris: Lahure, 1909.


Sources

Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural Press, 1980, pp. 28, 89-90; 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. 45; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 201;Middleton, Robin. “Auguste Choisy, Historian: 1841-1909.” International Architect 1 no. 5 (1981): 37-42; Etlin, Richard A. “Le Corbusier, Choisy, and French Hellenism: The Search for a New Architecture.” Art Bulletin 69, no. 2 (June 1987): 264-278; John, Richard. “Choisy, (François-)Auguste.” Dictionary of Art 7: 195; Mandoul, Thierry. Entre raison et utopie: l’Histoire de l’architecture d’Auguste Choisy. Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga, 2008.




Citation

"Choisy, Auguste." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/choisya/.


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Architectural historian of ancient civilizations and engineer; Professor at the Polytechnique (Paris). Choisy was the son of an architect. He studied at the École Polytechnique, Paris, from 1861 to 1863 and from 1863 at the École des Ponts et Chau