Full Name: Bertaux, Émile
Other Names:
- Émile Bertaux
Gender: male
Date Born: 23 May 1869
Date Died: 08 January 1917
Place Born: Fontenay-sous-Bois, Île-de-France, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Medieval styles, and Medieval (European)
Overview
Author of a pioneering study on medieval southern Italian art; professor of art history. Bertaux attended the Institut Sainte-Croix at Neuilly and the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. At the École normale supérieure, where he was a student from 1888 to 1891, he earned the degree of agrégé de lettres. After his military service he studied the art of the Italian renaissance under Eugène Müntz in Paris. In 1893 he enrolled at the École française de Rome, housed at the Palazzo Farnese. The next four years he made frequent travels in southern Italy, through Campania, Lucania, Puglia, Calabria, and Abruzzi, exploring and discovering in remote regions medieval art and architecture. During these trips he built up a considerable documentation including his own photographs and drawings. This project led to his doctoral dissertation, which he completed in the following years. Returned in Paris, in 1897, he served at the École normale supérieure as maître surveillant. In addition he revised the 7th edition of the Cicerone, at the invitation of Wilhelm Bode. His first book, Santa Maria de Donna Regina e l’arte senese a Napoli nel secolo XIV, was published in 1899. In 1901 he married Jeanne Larroumet, the daughter of the director of Beaux-Arts, Gustave Larroumet (1852-1903). One year later Bertaux was appointed maître de conférence in the history of modern art at the University of Lyon. In 1903 he submitted his doctoral thesis to the faculty of letters of the University of Paris, L’Art dans l’Italie méridionale de la fin de l’empire romain à la conquête de Charles d’Anjou. For this major study Bertaux was awarded the Premio Fould by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. In Lyon, he received an appointment as professor. He was concomitantly charged with the direction of the city’s Musée des Beaux-Arts. At the university Bertaux founded the Institute of art history and its library. His three-volume study on the city of Rome was published in 1904-1905. In 1906 he was awarded the Prix Charles Blanc by the Académie française. His special interest in the cultural relations between Southern Italy and Spain urged him to explore the art treasures of the Iberian Peninsula. Between 1905 and 1913 he was among the contributors to the pioneering Histoire de l’art, edited by André Michel. In several volumes (1905, 1906, 1908, 1911) Bertaux published on Italian and Spanish painting and sculpture during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as well as on Renaissance art in Portugal. In addition he wrote seven articles on Spanish art in Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, “Les primitifs espagnols”. In two contributions in this series Bertaux studied the artistic relations existing between Spain and Flanders in the fifteenth century, “Les disciples de Jean Van Eyck dans le royaume d’Aragon” (1907). Bertaux authored the catalog of the famous retrospective exhibition of Spanish art, held in Saragossa in 1908, L’Exposition rétrospective d’art de Saragosse, 1908: texte historique et critique. In 1910 his essay on Donatello appeared. On his initiative, the universities of Lyon and Grenoble created the art history section at the Institut français de Florence. Bertaux, while still professor at Lyon, served in this institute, between 1909 and 1912, as directeur d’étude de la section de l’histoire de l’art. After that period a new phase of his life began. In 1912 he was appointed in Paris curator of the collection of Madame Jacquemart-André, which was opened to the public in the residence of the owners in 1913. In the same year he quit his position in Lyon, charged with a complementary course of medieval Christian art at the faculty of letters of the University of Paris, replacing Émile Mâle. In addition he became chief editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. His career in Paris ended prematurely. Following the mobilization in 1914 he served as a translator in the infantry and later in the air force. As a pilot he was charged, in 1916, with missions to the front in France and Italy. He died in Paris of a poorly treated pneumonia in 1917, still being on duty. His successor, in 1919, was René Schneider. Bertaux’s colleagues and friends dedicated a volume of 35 articles to his memory in 1924, Mélanges Bertaux: recueil de travaux dédié à la mémoire d’Émile Bertaux. Bertaux had a strong interest in artistic relations between different countries and regions, such as southern Italy, Spain and Flanders.
Selected Bibliography
[complete list:] Papa Malatesta, Vittoria. “Scritti di Émile Bertaux” Émile Bertaux tra storia dell’arte e meridionalismo. La genesi de L’Art dans L’Italie méridionale. Rome: École française de Rome, 1907, pp. 467-476; [dissertation:] L’Art dans l’Italie méridionale de la fin de l’empire romain à la conquête de Charles d’Anjou. Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1903; Santa Maria de Donna Regina e l’arte senese a Napoli nel secolo XIV. Napels: F. Giannini, 1899; Rome. 1. L’Antiquité, 2. De l’ère des catacombes à l’avènement de Jules II, 3. De l’avènement de Jules II à nos jours. Paris: H. Laurens, 1904-1905; L’Exposition rétrospective d’art de Saragosse, 1908: texte historique et critique. Saragossa: La Editorial, Paris: Lévy, 1910; Donatello. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1910; Études d’histoire et d’art. Paris: Hachette, 1911.
Sources
Prevost, Michel. Dictionnaire de biographie française. 6 (1954): 176-177; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 258, 287, 421, 439, 446, 469; Garton, Tessa. “Bertaux, Émile” Dictionary of art, 3, p. 851; Papa Malatesta, Vittoria. Émile Bertaux tra storia dell’arte e meridionalismo. La genesi de L’Art dans L’Italie méridionale. Rome: École française de Rome, 2007; Papa Malatesta, Vittoria. “Émile Bertaux” Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art. (I.N.H.A, Institut national d’histoire de l’art); [obituaries:] Diehl, Charles. “Émile Bertaux” Gazette des Beaux-Arts LIX (1917): 1-8, and in Mélanges Bertaux: recueil de travaux dédié à la mémoire d’Émile Bertaux. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1924, p. 1-9; Reinach, Salomon. “Émile Bertaux” Revue archéologique V s., V, 1 (1917): 233-234; Mesmil, G. “Émile Bertaux” Rassegna d’arte antica e moderna (April, 1917): 23-24; Michel, André. “Émile Bertaux” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (January 10, 1917): 3; Pfister, Christian. Revue historique XLII, 124, 2 (1917): 431-432; Vinaccia, Antonino. “Émile Bertaux” Rassegna tecnica pugliese 6 (1917): 75-76.
Archives
- Bertaux, Émile [Collated], Institut national d’histoire de l’art. https://www.inha.fr/fr/ressources/publications/publications-numeriques/dictionnaire-critique-des-historiens-de-l-art/bertaux-emile.html.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Monique Daniels