Assistant Director of the Metropolitan Museum and curator of Decorative Arts during the installation of the Cloisters Museum. Breck was the son of Joseph Francis Breck (d. 1929) and Annie Hayes Breck (d.1933). His father owned an agricultural seed and implement company in Massachusetts. While a student at Harvard University, he met Herbert Eustis Winlock, a future director of the Metropolitan. The two became close associates during their time together at the museum. At Harvard, he worked on the Harvard Lampoon where talents in art emerged. After graduation from Harvard in 1907, he traveled to Europe, returning to Harvard to take graduate courses. He joined the Metropolitan in 1909 as an assistant curator of decorative arts, under Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner. In 1914 Breck resigned from the Met to become director of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. At Minneapolis, he was instrumental in bringing the Minneapolis Museum of Art into fruition. When World War I broke out, Valentiner, a native German, was required to return to Germany. Breck was hired back to the Met in Valentiner’s position as curator of the department of decorative arts in 1917. Breck set about installing the J. P. Morgan collection in the museum, a large donation the museum had recently acquired. In 1932 he was appointed director of the nascent Cloisters, the medieval satellite museum of the Met, then in its development stages. He suffered a heart attack with on a buying trip in Switzerland at age forty-eight. After Breck’s death, the department was divided into the three divisions, medieval art, under James Rorimer, Renaissance and modern art, under Preston Remington, and American Art, under Joseph Downs.
Selected Bibliography
The Library of the Late Joseph Breck. New York: American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, Inc., 1935; Italian Renaissance Sculpture: Twenty Pictures. New York; The Metropolitan Museum Press, 1933; introduction by, Peruvian Textiles: Examples of the Pre-Incaic Period. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930; Catalogue of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance Sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1913.
Sources
Forsyth, William. “Five Crucial People in the Building of the Cloisters.” in, Parker, Elizabeth C., and Shepard, Mary B. The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/International Center of Medieval Art, 1992, pp. 51-62; [obituary:] “Josephy Breck Dies on Mission for Art.” New York Times August 3, 1933. p. 17
Assistant Director of the Metropolitan Museum and curator of Decorative Arts during the installation of the Cloisters Museum. Breck was the son of Joseph Francis Breck (d. 1929) and Annie Hayes Breck (d.1933). His father owned an agricultural seed
Director of the Los Angeles County Museum, 1946-1951. Breasted was the son of James Henry Breasted (1865-1935), the Egyptologist who founded the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. At age fourteen, together with his father and older brother, he was one of the first to enter the recently opened tomb of Tutankhamen (“King Tut”), negotiating the inner chambers first because of his youthful size. Breasted graduated with highest honors from Princeton University in 1932, continuing study in Egyptology and Near Eastern archeology first at the university in Heidelberg and then at Queens College, Oxford. He married the Chicagoan Helen Culver Ewing (1903-2000) in 1935, who father had been the donor of Hull House to Jane Addams (1860-1935). Breasted was awarded a master’s degree in art history in 1937 from the University of Chicago. The following two years he researched at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He taught as an instructor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, 1937-1939 and a year at Hunter College, NY, 1941, before accepting the position of assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. During World War II (1942) he was assigned to the special forces section of the Army Quartermaster Corps in Washgington, D. C. After the war in 1946, Breasted accepted the directorship of the Los Angeles County Museum (including what would later become the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), replacing Roland McKinney. He co-lead the museum with Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner, the Museum’s “director consultant.” In 1948, he wrote an important book on Egyptian Servant Statues, part of the Bollingen series. The Museum at the time had a three-fold mission, to document art, history and science, conflicting interests which led to the former director’s resignation. Breasted’s administrative style and pro-art position rankled the museum staff and donors. After the resignation of chief curator, Joseph Kelleher in 1949 and the loss of the traveling exhibition and the Walter Arensberg Collection (to Philadelphia), museum staff protested to the Board and Breasted resigned in 1951. Breasted taught at the Kent School in Connecticut from 1952, becoming chairman of the art and art history department in 1963. In 1953, the Breasteds bought Mt. Mexico Farm in Tamworth, NH as a summer home. In 1971, they retired there. In 1978 during a recorded interview, he described his experiences at the Tutankhamen tomb opening. He died at a local hospital at age 74. Although Breasted was trained as an archaeologist, he concentrated his teaching on modern painting and European art. He was particularly interested in art education and wrote articles on instruction. He also sat on the film-screening board of the Museum of Modern Art’s Art-Film Festival (1957). A self-taught amateur calligrapher, Breasted established an annual national italic handwriting competition in the 1950s, which still continues.
Selected Bibliography
[CD audio recording] Opening of the Tomb of Tutankhamen. [s. l.]: VITA-TONE, s.d.; Egyptian Servant Statues. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948; edited, “The Writings of George Steindorff.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 66, no. 1, (January-March 1946): 76-87; “Prep School Experiment in Art-history.” Art Journal 14 no. 4 (1955): 358-63; “History of Art and the Art of History.” Art Journal 5 (January 1946): 85-92.
Sources
“To Duty.” Time November 20, 1942; “Museum Director Ouster Demanded: Citizens, Department Heads and Association Members Behind Move for Breasted’s Removal.” Los Angeles Times February 4, 1951, p. 27; Millier, Arthur. “Los Angeles Events.” Art Digest 25 (February 15 1951): 10; [obituary:] “James Breasted, Jr. Art Historian, Dies.” New York Times May 6, 1983, p. 15 D; “James H. Breasted, Art Authority, Dies.” Los Angeles Times May 7, 1983, p. C17.
Citation
"Breasted, Henry, Jr.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/breastedj/.
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Director of the Los Angeles County Museum, 1946-1951. Breasted was the son of James Henry Breasted (1865-1935), the Egyptologist who founded the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. At age fourteen, together with his father and older brothe
Medievalist architectural historian. Braunfels’ father was the composer Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) and his uncle was the sculptor and theorist Adolf von Hildebrand (1847-1921). Braunfels studied art history and literature history at the universities of Cologne, Paris (under Henri Focillon, Florence and finally in Bonn at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. At Bonn he studied art history under Paul Clemen and literature history the eminent philologist Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956). He received his degree in 1937 with a dissertation on the Rococo designer François de Cuvilliés, supervised by Clemen. After graduation, Braunfels made an extended research trip to Italy, working in the archives of Florence and Siena for his habilitation on Tuscan urban building of the middle ages. Publication of this research was interrupted by World War II. After the war, Braunfels was appointed an assistant curator at the Wallraf-Richartz museum in Cologne, 1945. His habilitation was accepted in 1950 (published 1953) via the University of Cologne. In 1953 he was appointed Ordinarius professor of art history at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany. These years he worked on Caroligian art, publishing exhibition catalogs on Charlemagne, Karl der Grosse: Leben und Nachleben, 1965-1968. He succeeded Hans Sedlmayr at the University in Munich in 1965. In 1969 Braunfels published his Abendländische Klosterbaukunst (Occidental Monasteries), a serious survey of the monasteries as organic functioning assemblages, from the founding of the Cistercian monasteries to Le Corbusier’s design. Braunfels retired emeritus from Munich in 1978. His son is the architect Stephan Braunfels (b. 1950). Braunfels’ art history is one combining history, sociology, political science, city planning and semantics (Metzler). His Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst in der Toskana was the result of years of combing through municiple minutes (in Latin) to glean the workings of city planning and building design. Braunfels theorized the city as a work of art, one created corporately by its citizens.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of W. Braunfels.” in Piel, Friedrich, and Traeger, Jörg. Festschrift Wolfgang Braunfels: zum 65. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1977, p. 433-439; [dissertation:]François de Cuvilliés: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der künstlerischen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich im 18 Jahrhundert. Bonn, 1937 published, Würzburg: R. Mayr, 1938; [habilitation:] Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst in der Toskana. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1953; and Beumann, Helmut, and Bischoff, Bernhard, and Schnitzler, Hermann, and Schramm, Percy Ernst, eds. Karl der Grosse, Lebenswerk und Nachleben. 5 vols. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1965-1968; Abendländische Klosterbaukunst. Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1969, English, Monasteries of Western Europe: the Architecture of the Orders. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972; Abendländische Stadtbaukunst Herrschaftsform und Baugestalt. Cologne: DuMont Schauberg 1976, English, Urban Design in Western Europe: Regime and Architecture, 900-1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988;
Sources
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 38-40.
Citation
"Braunfels, Wolfgang." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/braunfelsw/.
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Medievalist architectural historian. Braunfels’ father was the composer Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) and his uncle was the sculptor and theorist Adolf von Hildebrand (1847-1921). Braunfels studied art history and literature history at the universi
Subject Area(s): archaeology, Classical, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Career(s): secretaries (public officers)
Overview
First secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome (1840-1856). First to publish the François Vase after its finding and assembly.
Selected Bibliography
Antike Marmorwerke, 1843; Spada-Reliefs, 1845; Vorschule der Kunstmythologie, 1854.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 31-32
Citation
"Braun, Emil." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/braune/.
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Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and photographs
Overview
Early French photographer of art history images. He was born in Alsace, Germany, presently known as Dornach, Germany. Braun was the son of Samuel Braus, a police officer stationed in Bresançon. The family moved to Mulhouse (Alsace) in 1822 where Braun grew up. He attended the local école industrielle (he missed attending the Mulhouse design school), completing his trade schooling in Paris, settling there. Initially worked as a fabric designer, setting up his own business in 1834 with his brother. That year, too, he married Louise Marie Danet, the daughter of the former secretary-general of the state’s stables. Braun returned to Mulhouse after the death of his wife in 1843 to return to fabric design, but his employer’s enthusiasm for photography whetted an interest in him, too. He married Pauline Baumann, a horticulturalist’s daughter, and began photographing flowers. In 1853 he set himself up as a photographer, initially taking pictures which were then transferred to designs for wallpaper and fabric. His success in this venture led to a medal at the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle. Braun expanded his oeuvre, taking scenes, still lifes, rare animal studies and people in Europe. He produced stereopticans in 1857. By 1859 he had produced his first art-historical inventory, a series of published plates, funded by Napoleon III of the Haut-Rhin region. By the 1860’s Braun’s stereoptican business was hugely successful. In 1866 he began taking works of art to record them. The first collections were drawings and paintings from the Kunstmuseum, Basel, the Louvre, and the Albertina in Vienna. At the time, the issue of whether or not photographs damaged works of art was hotly debated. Braun became one of the largest publishers of art images, along with Fratelli Leopoldo and Giuseppe Alinari and Anderson. His albums were presented to Empress Eugénie of France; he was one of only two photographic firms invited to document the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In 1883, Braun secured an exclusive thirty-year contract to photograph the art objects at the Louvre. At Christmas, 1877, Braun suffered a sudden death. His business, however, safely in the hands of relatives and friends, continued to flourish. Images by Braun & Cie formed the collections of many budding art history departments, including Princeton University’s and its Index of Christian Art.
Selected Bibliography
Exposition du Palais Bourbon au profit des Alsaciens-Lorrains. Catalogue des peintures, pastels, dessins & objects d’art, reproduites en photographie inaltérable. Mulhouse: Veuve Bader & Co., 1874; Rome. Palais du Vatican. Chapelle Sixtine. Fresques de Michel-Ange … Mulhouse: Bader,1872; Statues, bas-reliefs-fresques & tableaux, Photographiés à Florence, Milan et Venise. Mulhouse: [Braun] 1860?; Lucerne et le lac des IV cantons. Photographies d’Ad. Braun. 2 vols. Lucerne:Fortuné Aubert, 1875.
Sources
Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. The Eye of the Tiger: The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883-1923, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Department of Art and Archaeology and Art Museum, 1983, p. 13; J. Paul Getty Museum. “Explore Artists: Aldophe Braun.” http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a1722-1; Kempf, Christian. “Adolphe Braun’s Photographic Enterprise.” In, Bergstein, Mary, and O’Brien, Maureen C. Image and Enterprise: the Photographs of Adolphe Braun. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000, pp. 9-29.
Citation
"Braun, Adolphe." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brauna/.
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Early French photographer of art history images. He was born in Alsace, Germany, presently known as Dornach, Germany. Braun was the son of Samuel Braus, a police officer stationed in Bresançon. The family moved to Mulhouse (Alsace) in 1822 where B
Collaborator with Rudolf Wittkower at the Herziana on the Drawings of Bernini (1931). His dissertation at the University of Leipzig was on Bernini drawings.
Selected Bibliography
Die Bücherei von St. Gallen und das althochdeutsche Schrifttum. Hermaea 17. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer, 1926; and Wittkower, Rudolf. Zeichnungen des Gianlorenzo Bernini. 2 vols. Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana, 9-10. Berlin: H. Keller, 1931; Verzeichnis der Gemälde und Bildwerke der Nationalgalerie Berlin in der Orangerie des Schlosses Charlottenburg. Berlin : [s.n.] 1966.
Sources
[mentioned] Jennifer Montagu and Joseph Connors. “Rudolf Wittkower 1901-1971.” Introduction to Art and Architecture in Italy: 1600-1750. 6th edition, volume 1, Painting in Italy. Pelican History of Art. pp. ix.
Citation
"Brauer, Heinrich Friedrich Ferdinand." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brauerh/.
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Collaborator with Rudolf Wittkower at the Herziana on the Drawings of Bernini (1931). His dissertation at the University of Leipzig was on Bernini drawings.
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), French Gothic, Gothic (Medieval), and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): educators
Overview
Scholar of French Gothic architecture; Professor at Columbia University, 1957-1973. Branner’s father, Martin Michael Branner (1888-1970), was a former Vaudeville star who created the popular newspaper comic strip, “Winnie Winkle” (1920-1962). His mother was Edith Fabbrini (Branner). The younger Branner grew up in New York city, majoring in Classics (Latin) at Yale University. He was drafted into the army in 1945 and served in the European theater. It was there that he gained an appreciation for Gothic architecture. Returning in 1946, he graduated from Yale in 1948 and immediately continued for his Ph.D. During that time he worked at the école des Chartes and the Institut d’Art et Archaeologie where, after completion of his coursework, he headed the excavation work of Bourges cathedral between 1950-1952. He was assisted in this by a Fullbright and a Marshall-Allison fellowship. His dissertation on Bourges was directed by Sumner McKnight Crosby. Jean Bony, another Yale mentor, termed Branner’s dissertation “the first full-scale analysis of one of the greatest medieval buildings.”. The same year Branner married Shirley Prager, a librarian. After teaching as an instructor at Yale in 1952, he accepted a position at the University of Kansas in 1954. He joined Columbia University in 1957 as an associate professor. A series of books and articles appeared in rapid succession, establishing his reputation as a scholar of creativity and analysis, beginning with his 1961 [1960 on the title page] Burgundian Gothic Architecture. He edited the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from 1964 to 1966. In 1965, his seminal Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture appeared, still considered his masterpiece. He was appointed full professor at Columbia in 1966. In 1969 he authored the Norton Critical Studies in Art History volume on Chartres cathedral. Branner became professor of Art History at Johns Hopkins in 1969, but returned to Columbia in 1971. His critical study on the illumination of Paris during the reign of St. Louis had just been completed when he died unexpectedly the following heart surgery at age 46. It was published in 1977. His students included C. Edson Armi, Georgia Wright and William Clark. After a series of year replacements, Stephen Gardner was eventually hired to replace him. A special issue of the Journal of the American Society of Architectural Historians was dedicated to him in October, 1975 and an issue of Gesta in 2000. Branner’s methodology utilized “three main interlocking techniques traditionally employed by architectural historians, namely design analysis, architectural investigation, and the identification of styles” (Fernie). He owned much to his Yale mentors, all scholars trained by the late Henri Focillon, Bony, Crosby and Louis Grodecki the latter whom he had met excavating St. Denis under Crosby. But Branner extended the discussion of Gothic architecture beyond the method of those dominant figures and–Paul Frankl and Hans Jantzen–to include patronage and cultural and economic history as well (Murray). His work reopened questions of origin, chronology and attribution in Gothic architecture and exerted a huge influence on medieval scholarship. For example, though Burgundian Gothic Architecture (1960/1961) overstated the security of the date of Troyes, 1208, it was nevertheless adopted unquestioningly by many scholars in subsequent publications. Branner’s concentration of Chartres in a linear conception of the development of the Gothic resulted in downplaying the regional experimentation that contributed to the development of the Gothic style (Pastan). His reliance upon a connoisseurship-approach to the “hands” of a sculptor or architect could result in tenuous conclusion of origin, such as his estimation that the St. Denis builder was of Burgundian roots. Branner also early on incoporated the study of early art-history texts as a way to understand the object in a cultural sense, employing among other concepts, the concept of Organismus of the early art historian Franz Kugler (Armi).
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] Branner, Shirley Prager. “A Bibliography and Index to the Works of Robert Branner.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 3 (October 1975): 167-172; Burgundian Gothic Architecture. London: A. Zwemmer, 1960 [in fact, 1961]; La cathédrale de Bourges et sa place dans l’architecture gothique. Paris: Tardy, 1962, English, The Cathedral of Bourges and it’s Place in Gothic Architecture. New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1989; Chartres Cathedral. New York: Norton, 1969; Gothic Architecture. New York: G. Braziller, 1961; Manuscript Painting in Paris During the Reign of Saint Louis: a Study of Styles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977; St. Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture. London: A. Zwemmer, 1965; The Painted Medallions in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. New York: American Philosophical Society, 1968.
Sources
Barnes, Carl F., ed. [entire issue dedicated to the memory of Robert Branner.] Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 3 (October 1975); 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. 51, mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 282-284; Branner, Shirely Prager. “Forward.” in, Branner, Robert. The Cathedral of Bourges and it’s Place in Gothic Architecture. New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1989, pp. xvii-xiv; [methodology discussed] Pastan, Elizabeth Carson. “Process and Patronage in the Decorative Arts of the Early Campaigns of Troyes Cathedral, ca. 1200-1220s.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53, no. 2 (June1994): 215; Murray, Stephen. Notre-Dame, Cathedral of Amiens: the Power of Change in Gothic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 4-5; [special issue entitled] “Robert Branner and the Gothic.” Gesta 39, no. 2 (2000), specifically, 1) Fernie, Eric C. “Robert Branner’s Treatment of Architectural Sources and Precedents.” pp. 157-160; 2) Kidson, Peter. “Bourges after Branner.” pp. 147-156; 3) Armi, C. Edson. “The Corbel Table.” p. 89, mentioned; [obituaries:] “Robert Branner: Jan. 13, 1927-Nov. 26, 1973.” Gesta 13, no. 1 (1974): 3; Bony, Jean. “On Robert Branner.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 3 (October 1975): 164-166; “Robert Branner, Art Historian And Expert on Gothic Style, Dies.” New York Times November 28, 1973, p. 48; Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 no. 82 [84] (October 1974): supplement 48.
Scholar of French Gothic architecture; Professor at Columbia University, 1957-1973. Branner’s father, Martin Michael Branner (1888-1970), was a former Vaudeville star who created the popular newspaper comic strip, “Winnie Winkle” (1920-1962). His
Subject Area(s): conservation (discipline), conservation (process), Italian (culture or style), and museums (institutions)
Career(s): conservators (people in conservation) and museologists
Overview
Leader of modern museum conservation practices; historian of Italian art. Brandi graduated in with a law degree from the University of Siena in 1927, but his interests had moved to art so much that he wrote a thesis the following year at the University of Florence on the artists Rutilio Manetti, Francesco Vanni, and Ventura Salimbeni. In 1930 he was assigned to the Administration of Antiquities and the Fine Arts to assist the Inspector (Soprintendenza) of Monuments and Galleries of Siena. There he cataloged and reinstalled the collection of the paintings of the Academy of Fine Arts of Siena in its new home in Buonsignori palace. This resulted in Brandi’s important 1933 exhibition, “La Regia pinacoteca di Siena.” The exhibition was a major achievement, documenting the swelling interested in the so-called “Sienese primitives” in a well-researched and impartial catalog. The same year he was appointed Inspector to Monuments of Bologna. During his tenure, the city created its first laboratory for art works restoration, again resulting in an important exhibition, “Mostra della pittura riminese del trecento” (Exhibition of Painting from Rimini from the 1300’s) of 1935. He moved to Rome in 1936 to become the Director of Antiquity and Fine Arts. In 1938 the Italian Minister of Fine Arts, Giulio Carlo Argan, endowed a government institute for restoration, the Istituto Centrale del Restauro (ICR), appointing Brandi, a friend, as its first director. There Brandi developed his theories on the careful restoration and conservation of monuments. The approaching war limited the Institute’s activities and it closed in 1945, but reopened shortly thereafter. As director of a major conservation center, Brandi intervened extensively in controversies of restoration. He published numerous articles on modern approaches in conservation, some in English, which were collected in his 1963 Teoria del restauro. Two publications on Duccio one of ca. 1949 and a monograph of 1951 remain his best writing. He retired from the Istituto in 1959.Brandi’s methods of conservation allowed him to make chronological assessments based more than on simple art-historical opinion. His date of a pivotal panel of painting in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere as sixth century was questioned by Carlo Bertelli. Brandi’s date, however, has subsequently been accepted as correct. John Pope-Hennessy praised Brandi’s 1933 Siena painting catalog as, “the first fully efficient catalogue of a public collection of Italian painting.”
Selected Bibliography
[bibliography, to 1979:] Storia dell’arte 37/40 (1980): ; Duccio. Florence: Vallecchi, 1951; Giotto. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1983; La prima architettura barocca: Pietro da Cortona, Borromini, Bernini. Bari: Laterza, 1970; Quattrocentisti senesi. Milan: Hoepli, 1949; Rutilio Manetti, 1571-1639. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1932; Il Tempio malatestiano. Turin: Edizioni Radio italiana, 1956; Teoria del restauro. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letterature, 1963; Teoria generale della critica. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1974; La Maesta [of Duccio di Buoninsegna]. Milan: Pirelli, 1953; Pietro Lorenzetti: affreschi nella basilica di Assisi. Rome: Edizioni mediterranee, 1958; Mostra della pittura riminese del trecento. Rimini: Stabilimento tipografico Garattoni, 1935; La Regia pinacoteca di Siena. Rome: La Libreria dello stato, 1933; Duccio: quattrocentisti sienesi. Florence: Vallecchi, s.d, [1949?]; “Cleaning of pictures in relation to patina, varnish and glazes.” Burlington Magazine 91 (July 1949): 182-892, and (October 1950): 297-8.
Sources
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 438; [cited] Previtali, Giovanni. “The Periodization of Italian Art History.” History of Italian Art. vol. 2 Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 16, note 17; [obituary:] Gardner, Julian. “Cesare Brandi.” Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1027 (October 1988): 770-771.
Citation
"Brandi, Cesare." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brandic/.
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Leader of modern museum conservation practices; historian of Italian art. Brandi graduated in with a law degree from the University of Siena in 1927, but his interests had moved to art so much that he wrote a thesis the following year at the Unive
Place Born: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Overview
Second director of the National Gallery, London, and artist. He was born in the vicinity of Oxford, UK. Boxall was the son of Thomas Boxall, a civil servant in the tax office. After attending Abingdon grammar school he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1819. He traveled to Italy several times, beginning in 1827-8, 1833-6, and 1845 to study the masterworks of art. Boxall became a professional painter, especially portraiture, a stable for revenue, including his friend William Wordsworth (now at the National Portrait Gallery, London) and a full-length portrait of Prince Albert as Master of the Trinity House (now at Trinity House, London). His portraits were never considered good likenesses, however. In 1851 he was elected to the Royal Academy as an associate and in 1863 a full member. When Charles Lock Eastlake, the first director of the National Gallery, died in 1865, Boxhall was appointed his successor (1866) by Gladstone. Though Eastlake himself may have been a Boxall supporter for the post, others, such as Austen Henry Layard, then under-secretary at the Foreign Office, and John Charles Robinson, superintendent of art at the South Kensington Museum (and Queen Victorian’s preference), were passed over. Boxall relinquished his painting career to run the museum, making many European trips to study both paintings for possible acquisition and installation practices of continental museums. He remained a friend of Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake (painting her portrait in 1854), and acting as an executor for Eastlake’s estate. This resulted in nine paintings from his collection, including Piero della Francesca’s St. Michael and Pisanello’s Virgin and Child with Saint George and Saint Anthony Abbot, as well as his personal art library. Under his direction, the Gallery acquired such important works as Carlo Crivelli’s Demidoff Altarpiece, Michelangelo’s Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels (the ‘Manchester Madonna’), and Mantegna’s Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome, Pieter de Hooch’s Woman and her Maid in a Courtyard, and Sir Robert Peel’s excellent Dutch master’s collection in 1871. His purchase of the so-called “Suermondt Rembrandt,” Christ Blessing the Children (now assigned to Nicolaes Maes) caused the authenticity of the work to rightly be questioned. A similar incident occurred with Michelangelo’s Entombment, this time in a debate in the House of Lords in 1869. Boxall also over the reconstruction and additions to the Gallery by Edward Middleton Barry. Boxall received an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1870, and a knighthood in 1871. As early as 1871 Boxall attempted to resign from the Gallery, citing his chronic poor health. He groomed the eventual successor, fellow painter Frederic William Burton to the position, which the Trustees finally accepted in 1874. He retired from the Royal Academy in 1877. He died of lung congestion and is buried at Kensal Green cemetery. His archives are at the National Gallery, London, including sketchbooks and correspondence with his curator at the Gallery, Ralph Nicholson Wornum. Boxall’s poor health and likely life-long battle with depression curtailed his ability to manage the Gallery effectively. His retention of G. B. Cavalcaselle as a buyer and Italian authority until 1869 demonstrated his ability, like Eastlake, to employ experts to further the goals of the Gallery.
Selected Bibliography
[illustrated] Portraits of the Principal Female Characters in the Waverley Novels: to which are added Landscape Illustrations of The Highland Widow, Anne of Geierstein, Fair Maid of Perth, Castle Dangerous. London: Charles Tilt,1833; Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pilot: a Tale of the Sea. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831.
Sources
Egerton, Judy. “Sir William Boxall, R.A.” National Gallery Catalogues: the British School. London: National Gallery Publications/Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 419-425; Levey, Michael. “A Little-known Director: Sir William Boxall.” Apollo 101 (May 1975): 354-9; Liversidge, M. J. H. “John Ruskin and William Boxall: Unpublished Correspondence.” Apollo 85 (January 1967): 39-44; Avery-Quash, Susanna. “Boxall, Sir William (1800-1879).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] The Times (London) December 8, 1879,p. 8; The Athenaeum December 13, 1879, pp. 769-70; Art Journal (1880): 83.
Second director of the National Gallery, London, and artist. He was born in the vicinity of Oxford, UK. Boxall was the son of Thomas Boxall, a civil servant in the tax office. After attending Abingdon grammar school he entered the Royal Academy Sc
